


crosseyed & painless

by KrisRix, MooseFeels



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amputation, Dancing, Empire, Fights, Found Family, Invasion, M/M, Mecha, Oracles, Repairs, Seasons, Sex, War, farming, harvest, true love i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-11 17:35:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 63,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15977156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KrisRix/pseuds/KrisRix, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: The Katsuki family hires Feltsman security to guard them their last summer in exile along the lake, before they return to their ancestral home. Yuuri doesn't realize he's met Viktor before. It's a short, hot summer. It's a strange summer.





	1. thaw

**Author's Note:**

> what have i been working on all summer???  
> well.........  
> (endless, endless, endless love and affection to kris, who is an incredible artist who turned out unbelievably beautiful work for this thing)

* * *

Nadezhda is impossibly tall and broad and strong. It's the first thing Viktor thought when he laid eyes on her, more than ten years ago, and it's a thought that still comes to him every time he has an absence of more than a couple days. Even folded in the garage, she looks so big; a fortress. A home. Her armor is the stiff color of the metal that constitutes her; Viktor thinks that maybe in peacetime, she was painted, but long years of patrols, of battle, of war and washing and repair has removed from her any decoration not endemic to her very form. That does mean that there are a few flourishes left, though. There's the stately curve of filigree at her chestplate, along the artificial clavicle that denotes right where Viktor's own would be in the cockpit. There's the way her legs are shaped, less a gesture of brutalism than the models that came after her and more approaching the organic curves of a stalk of wheat. There's the articulated delicacy of her strong hands. There's the medallion on her shoulder where once, Yakov told him, a cape would be fastened.

Nadezhda is beautiful, and that's part of why Viktor loves her, and it's part of why he thinks this twenty ton hunk of wire and metal and gears and oil loves him back.

It's dark in the garage. No one else in there. It's late at night, and even if it weren't, everyone is at the bar, celebrating the most recent victory. They've managed to push imperials back away from the edges of an eastern region. It's a rare victory for them. They've been losing so long; all Viktor's life, really.

Twenty-seven, and Viktor feels too old for this.

He stands in front of Nadezhda, and he thinks about climbing into her cockpit and running away.

There's a crash, suddenly, and Viktor's hand is on his holster before he can think, pulling his gun forward.

There's a groan and then some shuffling and someone stands up. They sway and bob a little, drunk.

Viktor reholsters his gun, but he doesn't say anything. He's not sure if they've seen him. He hopes they haven't. It wouldn't do for the hero to miss his own occasion.

"Shit," they hiss, and they fumble momentarily, in the dark, before finding the switch for the lights.

The tracks in front of Nadezhda flicker on. Electric light. A luxury this far out into the sticks. One Viktor hasn’t seen much of.

"Oh," the stranger says, and they stumble forward the handful of yards into Viktor's personal space. "Oh, it's you."

Viktor shrugs. He laughs a little. He doesn't want to have to be charming. He's exhausted. He just wants to hang out with his giant robot in peace.

"It's me," he says. "Viktor Feltsman."

They reel into the light. A round face and wide, brown eyes. Dark hair. They smile.

"I just wanted to--" he swallows. Adjusts his glasses. "I just wanted to look at her, up close. I can go, though-- I know-- I know you must want some privacy."

"Oh, no," Viktor says, shaking his head. "No, you're fine, I was just going."

"You don't have to," the stranger says. He swallows. There's a bottle in his hand, and he gestures with it toward Viktor, raising his eyebrows, expectantly.

Viktor takes it from him and has a sip. It's sweet and bubbles a little. It's good.

"I've had too much," the stranger says, pulling a finger in front of his lips. "Don't tell anyone. Don’--" He stutters, taking a breath. “Don’ tell Nishigori.”

Viktor smiles. "I won't," he says. "I promise."

The stranger looks away from Viktor, directs his gaze to Nadezhda.

"She's beautiful," he says. He sighs, just a little. Happily. "I always wanted to see her again."

Viktor looks at him, at the long, straight line of his body, the place of his hands on his hips, the outward thrust of his chest.

"She saved me once," he says. He sounds so fond.

"She did?" Viktor asks. He hoped he'd remember, but it's hard to remember every face. Every town, every village, every person. Viktor hopes, but his failures have always been of his memory; his ego.

The stranger nods. "I was just little, though. She was still painted, too."

"What color was she?" Viktor asks.

The stranger smiles, his eyes drifting closed. "She was blue," he says. "Ice blue, lighter than the sky." He swallows, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "We were in the country,in the summer. Back home. I remember-- I was standing by the lake, with my sister, and we heard the--  it's like thunder, when they come."

He opens his eyes and looks back at him. "You know that, though," he says. His eyes are playful, bright.

He drifts a little closer to her, and he throws his arms up and wraps them around her. There's something impossibly fond, loving, in his expression. In how his eyes close, his round cheek smushed against her leg.

"She saved us," he says. "I love her."

"That was when Yakov piloted her," Viktor says.

He nods. "I guess," he says. "I was little." He turns around, leaning against her leg, with his own legs crossed at the ankles in front of himself. He bites his bottom lip. "I'm Yuuri," he says.

Viktor smiles at him. "Hi," he says."Hi," Yuuri answers. His cheeks are flushed. 

* * *

 


	2. spring

The sun comes up early in the summer, waking up the cicadas with it. Yuuri yawns and stares up a the netted ceiling before he rolls out of bed and raises the bamboo shade that runs over the open hole of his window. It's warm here, all the year-- hotter all the year than the summers of his early childhood in Hasetsu.

Once, Yuuri is told, this was a winter residence. They'd visit but for most of the time, it would sit only to be used by guests and travelers. Now though, they live here all the year, and all the rooms are not only full, they are over full. Yuuri only gets the space to himself because his family owns the house, and the room he sleeps in isn't technically a room at all; it's a garret on the side of the house, too oddly shaped to shove in more than one bed, too small to hold much more than Yuuri and a chest and a half table crushed up behind the door; a makeshift desk. Yuuri stretches and pulls on a shirt and some pants, tying them around his waist before he slips on a pair of shoes and heads out the door.

They are beginning to seed the rice this week,  placing the seedlings from the beds into the vast, tilled sections of the paddies. It's hard work, bent over in the sun, working in the wet mud, the water curling up into his palm. It's hard work, keeping all the seedlings in straight, long lines through paddies. It's hard work, but it's important work. Rice grows quickly and stores easily; expensive enough that it can be turned into gold quickly, just about anywhere they might decide to go.

Yuuri knows that just because they've been settled here for nearly six years that they won't be on the run tomorrow.

"Yuuri!" Axel cries behind him, and he hears her voice just before he hears the splashing footsteps of her and her sisters and then the sudden impact of them crashing into him.

Yuuri extricates himself from the mud, wiping it away from his face.

"Yuuri!" Axel cries, again. Or maybe it's Loop but-- oh, _ouch_ \-- no, that's definitely Loop's foot that's presently trying to dig into his kidney. Which of course only begs the question where--

"Yuu-ri!" Lutz shouts. _Ah._

"Yes?" Yuuri replies, "What is it, girls?"

"Minako-san wants you!" Loop shouts, and Yuuri finally manages to get his footing, to stand up and look down at the three triplets.

Yuuri remembers the night they were born. It was storming. They'd just made it here, to Lake Kuter, and they'd just thrown the locks from the gates and gotten Yuuko into the first room they could find. Yuuri remembers holding the lantern for Minako. He remembers their cries in the night. He remembers being unsure if the thunder they heard was the footfall of imperials or just the storm. He remembers waiting. He remembers their small voices piercing the heavy night air.

They've never known any home but the lake and the winter palace here.

Yuuri looks down at their round faces, chubby with baby fat and well fed on the ducks and catfish that spend time in their flooded fields.

He sighs. "Thank you, girls," he says.

"I'll take over here," Yuuko says, coming down the path. "Yuuri, we'll work on the planting."

"Thanks," Yuuri says.

Yuuko pulls a towel from over her shoulder and hands it to him. "Sorry about the greeting," she says. "I tried to tell them to be gentle, but--" She sighs.

"It's fine," Yuuri says. "No better way to see how the tilling went."

Yuuko huffs a soft sigh before she turns and takes the basket of seedlings onto her own hip. "Go talk to Minako-- something's up."

Yuuri nods and heads back down the path, to the large throne room of the palace where Yuuri's mother and Minako both make their residence.

"Good morning, Yuuri," Nishigori says from the courtyard where he trains with the handful of guards they maintain. "Looks like my girls managed to get you good."

Yuuri nods, and Nishigori laughs loudly. The distraction is just long enough that the leggy teen he's sparring can manage to sweep his legs with his staff, sending him into the beaten dirt of the courtyard.

"Good morning, Yuuri," Minami says, as Yuuri passes him. He's sitting with a few others his age, arduously stitching repairs on traveling packs.

Yuuri nods. It's just through the tall doors and down the long, columned hall before he makes it to where his mother and Minako hold court.

"Yuuri," his mother greets. "I thought maybe you hadn't left your room yet. We wouldn't have sent the triplets after you if we'd known."

Minako shakes her head, pulling herself up from the cushion she was laying on. "It's good you are so familiar with your people, Yuuri, but covered in mud is no way to come to court."

Minako is the one person who looks the same as she did when they fled Hasetsu. Her hair is still impossibly long and dark. Her eyes are still flinty and clever. Her smile is still mischievous and knowing. Even out of the jewelry and vestments of her position, she's beautiful. Even absent the authority of the crown, it's impossible to forget her as the oracle, trained in the ruined capitol, before the war began.

"I'm sorry," Yuuri says, falling to one knee, bowing his head. "I thought this was...urgent?"

His mother smiles, beneficently.

It's technically a throne, where she sits. Technically, she's a duchess, and Yuuri will one day be a duke. Even with their ancestral seat seized by the imperials and their people exiled to live cramped in winter palaces, they retain these titles. Even with the principality crushed, they retain these ways and these titles.

The throne is not gilt though. Its decoration amounts to the thoughtful carving of a boar along the top of the chair and a thick, turquoise cushion for the seat. These symbols of themselves that waited for their time in the palace.

"Minako had a vision," she says. "We need you cleaned up and at your most presentable."

Yuuri looks from his mother back to Minako.

"We have knights coming," she says. "You should entertain them."

Yuuri shakes his head. "But you have training from the capital and--"

"And I'm not as young as I once was and I won't be around forever," she says. She paces, looking at Yuuri from every angle. She's not dressed formally, not yet. Her dark hair is pulled into a messy bun instead of straight and combed. She's wearing clothes more suitable for the fields than for diplomacy-- loosely tied and easily washed. "You know how. I taught you; I know you know. Go get bathed and then meet me in my private quarters and we'll start getting you stretched and dressed."

Yuuri takes a deep breath. He nods.

* * *

The lake water is cooler than the ambient air, but it's nice. Yuuri steps in, off of the long porch that stretches over the reeds and to a part of the lake less frequented by fishers, unused for laundry, and just about right to slip out of his clothes and grab some soap and wash the dirt of a few days (and his tumble headfirst into the paddy) away. Plenty of people bathe here, but not at this time of morning, when there is work still to be done.

Yuuri submerges himself fully under the water and sighs as he comes up, pushing his dark hair away from his face. He lathers the soap and scrubs over his hair and face, feeling dirt and oil come up. He closes his eyes and submerges himself in the water, holding his breath for as long as he can. He runs his hands through his hair and gets as much of the soap out as he can, and then he swims a few feet away from the dock and comes up, for breath.

The feeling is the cleanest he ever feels, and it's unspeakably wonderful.

"Oh," Yuuri hears. "Hello, there."

He reels, turning around in the water to look at--

"I'm naked!" He cries. "I'm bathing! Go away!"

The stranger chuckles and covers his eyes with his hands. He's tall, and dressed in the metropolitain style-- tall boots to his calves and a crisp shirt tucked into his dark trousers. There's a holster on his thigh, with a gun seated in it.

Yuuri turns around immediately, looking out toward the rest of the lake instead of the dock and the woods near it.  

"Sorry," he says. "Sorry-- I didn't realize this path led to a bathing beauty."

"Go away!" Yuuri cries. "This is private!"

The stranger chuckles. "I'm sorry-- I'll just-- which path leads toward the compound?"

"Just follow the dock!" Yuuri answers. "And go away! I'm naked!"

There's more laughter, and then footsteps away.

Yuuri plunges back under the water and screams for a moment, before he climbs out, wrapping his bath sheet around himself and walking back down dock and up the path to private apartments that are Minako's.

Minako's apartments are tucked off a path of the lake, in a cottage that once would have been a groundskeeper's. Barely three minutes' walk from her cottage is a small coop and courtyard where she keeps a handful of chickens, generating eggs and occasionally meat for them. Minako's space is still small, but it's blessedly private, and it is the privacy that she requires to perform her duties and to teach Yuuri the intricacies of performing his.

Yuuri slides her door open and steps inside.

She stands in front of a chest, looking through what robes and costumes they have managed to save. She sighs. Her hair is still tucked up; she still wears the clothes from the field.

"Minako," Yuuri says. "Aren't you--"

She turns around, a bundle of material held to her chest. She shakes her head. "I told you, Yuuri," she says. "I'm not the same age I was. You have to start taking responsibilities."

"But I didn't receive training in the--"

"You received training from me," she says, placing the bundle down and pulling Yuuri over to the vanity. "I just heard the knights walk by. We're already running late; let's get you ready."

* * *

Viktor pilots Nadezhda long through the woods, as carefully as he can. It's better to move in a winding sort of way, in the footsteps of other knights, around the old trees, around the dens and hides that form the home for the deer and rabbits and birds. The woods here are lovely, deep and grown-- nothing like the torn and rent fields hundreds of miles back, on the remains of capitals and villages long since lost.

It's hard, sometimes, to fight tooth and nail for places that are ruins of what they once were. It’s hard to love the places Yakov has only told him about in stories, Viktor’s memories long since faded into the realm of murky dreams and nightmares he can’t explain.

It's easier to see why someone might want to defend this than the rubble and ash that remains of Sanktpet, of Mukoiy, held deep to the West in the land that the empire now holds, stolen.

But of course, Viktor can only get so close in Nadezhda before he knows he needs to stow her somewhere hidden and continue on foot.

Viktor steps into a cave behind a waterfall pretty easily. Chris scouted it out on a map weeks ago, when he first rendezvoused with the dukedom's oracle.

_They're protective_ , he'd said. _Wary. Come ready to be confident and to be underbought._

Viktor has to sell himself for cheap. It's spring; a starving season. Things are growing in the ground but their winter stores have grown empty and most of the markets are selling at exorbitant prices. Viktor's got to eat, and so does Chris and so does Otabek and so does JJ and so does Phichit. They're all hungry, which means they’re hungry for work.

Viktor levers the cockpit open and hops out. He stretches his shoulders,  tense from the harness settled over them all day, all night. He rolls his neck and sighs. He checks his thigh for his holster, checks his gun.

"Okay, Nadya," he says, looking at his knight. "Keep out of trouble."

She doesn't answer, her chest open, her knees folded up, arms draped gracelessly onto the ground.

Viktor fiddles her key from the chain about his neck, a large opal that slides into a hollow set on her navel.

When Viktor was younger, he thought maybe pressing her key there made the key glow. Now, though, twenty seven and world weary, he is less sure.

Nadezhda stands up, and her cockpit slides closed.

Safe.

Viktor looks up at her, at the impassive grill of her visor.

She doesn't say anything back to him.

Viktor steps along the edge of the cliff that leads behind the waterfall, doing all he can to keep dry. He's only got the clothes on his back right now, the rest of his things with Chris with the caravan. Most of the space inside Nadya is full of Nadya-- her nerve cable and wiring. He doesn’t have space in her like Chris and JJ do to stow his kit.

He makes it, mostly dry, and he hikes north through the wood, to the edge of the lake.

Inside of Nadezhda, things are different. The smell and texture of the air is against his skin, instead of filtered through the machinery. It's close and heavy-- he sighs, unbuttoning his shirt. Summer here is going to be torture. Summer here, in Nadezhda-- he already craves death.

Eventually, though, the rough hike meets up with a stone path, which eventually winds down to a wooden dock, and there, at the lake, is a man, bathing.

Viktor's struck, startled, and his first instinct is to reach for his gun.

He waits though, and then he's struck by the familiarity.

At the tavern-- a village a ways north of here. They'd pressed a company of imperials away from a trade route, out of disputed territory and well into their own camp. The dancing.

It's been maybe a year. A year, and Viktor hasn't been able to stop thinking about him. About his laughter against his neck (free and loose), about the smell of his breath (sweet from the bubbly liquor), about the sway of his hips (graceful, round), about the feeling of his body under Viktor's hands (strong and somehow softer, plush beneath his fingertips). It's been maybe a year past that winter, and here he is, bathing in the lake, every inch as beautiful as when Viktor left him, his questions, his promises left heavy in his ear.

"Oh," he says. "Hello there."

What more could he say, to the stranger who knows him so well?

_Yuuri_. The name comes back to him like a song.

"I'm naked!" He cries, turning sharply in the water to look at Viktor with wide, horrified eyes. Color rises quickly to his cheeks-- to his face. "I'm bathing! Go away!"

Viktor covers his face with his hand. He hadn't seen much of him anyway, just the tanned planes of his back. He laughs. "Sorry," he laughs. "I didn't know this path led to a bathing beauty!"

There's more splashing. "Go away! This is private!"

He must be shy, without the liquor to loosen him.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Viktor placates. "Just tell me-- which path leads to the compound?"

"Just follow the dock!" Yuuri cries. There's a little more splashing. "And go away! I'm naked!"

Viktor can't help his laughter, but he complies, looking beyond his hand just enough to find the dock and walk along it, not looking back.

It's not a long walk, along the dock, to the back of the compound. It's not hard to see how once, not too long ago, this had been the most splendid, privileged view of the lake for a private family. It's not hard to see the places where the facade remains, written into the size of it, the scale of it. Written into the columns and the low but reaching tiled roof. The building is both massive and made to a scale that makes it seem to hug the ground-- wider than it is tall in a particular way.

A few people stop and look at him as he approaches, and then run in. By the time Viktor makes it to the bank of stone steps leading up into the back of the compound-- the back of the palace-- there stands a guard.

"Ho there!" Viktor calls. "I am Knight Viktor Feltsman, representative of Feltsman Security Company. Whom am I addressing?"

"Knight Operator Feltsman," the guard answers. "The court of Hasetsu welcomes you."

Viktor walks up the steps carefully. Weeds poke up amidst cracks in the paving. Leaves and dirt are settled over them.

Viktor bows, once he reaches the top.

"Knight Operator," the guard says, his voice gentle but confident. "Welcome to our court. Please, come in." He holds a tall spear, topped with a fearsome looking head, as broad across as Viktor's hand and coming to a wicked point. Beside it, a long white tassel rests against the wide, sturdy staff.

Viktor rises, and follows the guard across a paved courtyard and through a set of large, wooden doors. They seem solid and sturdy.

_Defensible_ , Viktor thinks, as he follows behind them. The wooden doors give to another courtyard, this one occupied by a sea of people, a path cut between them to another set of doors. The low hush of their whispers is like an ocean, insensible as any one sound.

_The knight that evacuated us_ , he hears.

He remembers the story he heard.

_She saved me._

Viktor looks forward, his pace steady. He tries not to listen.

Another set of doors open, and he follows in, into a room forested densely by slender columns, forming a long hall that eventually funnels out. The guard steps to the left, opposite another holding a similar spear and wearing similar armor.

Viktor has conducted meetings like these many times, with many leaders. Viktor has been escorted into yurts belonging to nomads looking to protect their herd from hungry wolves. He has been pressed before bloody thrones of warlords, sitting high in their forts, looking to gain an edge against another criminal fighting for stolen territory amidst the dregs left behind by the invaders. Viktor has been here before-- not here, but in this meeting, dozens of times.

This is the same. This is different.

The throne is small, but it's a throne. It's the only chair in the room, and also the only one set on a dias. It's of unstained wood, dark and unvarnished, carved with the head of a boar emerging from the back, its tusks flanking the duchess on either side. The duchess herself is a small woman, her hair maybe a little lighter than it was in her youth, her face a little more lined, her skin a little more tanned. She wears clothes that looked faded and worn, but maybe once had been fine. To the right of her, someone kneels-- a woman in trousers with her dark hair brushed into a shining curtain, framing her face to either side.

"Knight Operator Feltsman," the duchess says, and her voice is warm. "We welcome you to our court. We hope glad omens accompany you."

Viktor bows, dropping to a knee. "Your grace," he greets. "I hope you might forgive my lateness. I found the woods captured my attention longer than I intended."

"They are lovely, are they not?" She says, graciously. "We are happy to forgive your lateness if you are happy to forgive ours."

Viktor rises. Frowns despite himself. "Your grace forgive me-- you are here, are you not?"

She smiles. Viktor notes the glint of brass jewelry about her neck. "Our oracle is still preparing," she says. "Although the college was destroyed, we retain the ways."

Viktor's heard of this, but he has no memory of it. He was not old enough to see oracular performance when Sanktpet still stood, and Yakov was never terribly religious anyway.

He nods though, gracious. "Of course," he says. "You must forgive me-- it's unfamiliar to me."

The duchess smiles. Her smile is gentle, like the lapping of warm water. "Do not worry," she says. "You need only watch."

Someone approaches from nearby to place a cushion on the floor. They gesture, and Viktor sits in the style of the woman to the left of the duchess, on his knees, his hands placed on his lap.

The woman rises, to take a drum, hanging from the wall. She kneels, the edge of the drum rested against her raised knee, positioned across the space of her lap.

She strikes the drum-- its sound is hollow and low in the room.

She strikes it again, before falling gradually into a steady rhythm, a sweep and a few strikes. More articulated than a heartbeat.

Viktor then sees someone approach into the room from the right, their steps measured and careful.

It takes him a moment to realize.

Yuuri, who had been bathing.

He stands in a robe with his shoulders exposed, his clavicle similarly clear to the air. There's a broad, wide triangle painted in the space just below his neck, crimson against his tanned skin. His glasses are gone, his brown eyes looking out into the room. He stops to stand just between Viktor and the duchess, close enough that Viktor can see the details of him, far enough away that he can move effectively.

So he can _dance_.

If there is anything that Viktor has gathered from the whispers and murmurings he's heard about oracular practice and performance, it's first and foremost a dance.

There are silver bells in long, hollow cones that drip from the corners of his broad, rectangular sleeves. They fall onto the air when he spreads his arms wide, his hips cocked contrapasso to the rest of his body, forming a sinuous curve. His brown eyes are different-- seeing but not present.

It's eerie, the way his movements start slow. The raised sweep of his leg forward, the steady glide of his arms across the air-- almost swimming. The cock of his head, raising his neck upward into the air. A sweet and strange curve. His movements start slow but somehow become faster, stranger. Viktor's not sure how time passes. He can't tear his eyes from the pleats in his turquoise robe. Does the crimson triangle on his chest smear with the sweat of his effort, or is it how it drags across the air when he spins, suddenly? Does his expression shift-- something strange and frightened overcoming his mouth? Does the robe slip ever down his arms, to rest in the crook of his elbow, or do Viktor's eyes play tricks on him, coveting a reveal that is not there, that would not happen?  

It seems to last forever. It seems to last no time at all.

But there's a moment-- a strange one, where the drum suddenly stops and he freezes there. Yuuri freezes there and the woman rises to rush across the space, drum forgotten, to take him into her arms before he collapses.

Viktor watches them-- his arm pulled over her shoulder, his body like his strings have been cut-- as she pulls them both from the room. Viktor watches them, and he sees the duchess watch them intently as they leave.

Viktor thinks he might seen concern over her features.

"Knight Operator Feltsman," the duchess says, "what price might we pay you and your company to guard our people and our palace in the summer months? There have been skirmishes to the west of us, and we know our days along Lake Kuter are numbered. We need time for one more growing season."

Viktor nods. "Shelter for my company," he says. "Food for us and a space for us to make repairs. A percentage of your harvest-- winter comes for us, too, Your Grace, and grain is worth more than gold."

"How large a percentage?" She asks.

"Fifteen percent," he says.

_Ask for fifteen_ , Chris had said. _When they bargain us down to eight, we'll seem reasonable._

"Of course," the duchess answers. "How soon can your company be here?"

Viktor startles.

* * *

 

* * *

Yuuri wakes up slowly, slowly.

It's the small aches at first. The strain across his shoulders, the slapped feeling on the soles of his feet. Then there's the burn-- the burn-- of the ochre painted across his chest. Yuuri's not sure what's in the paint that Minako lays there, every time before he dances like this, but something about it sears into him.

Yuuri doesn't realize he's awake at first-- it's Minako's hands pressing firmly into the edges of his shoulders, her eyes serious and sharp that begins to make him know.

It's over.

"Yuuri," she says. "What did you feel?"

Other people will ask him what he sees. Minako, though, an oracle trained in the college at Sanktpet, she knows. It's not seeing. It's feeling.

Yuuri throws up into the bucket beside the cot set up in the hall. That's also something he does every time.

He breathes. Long breaths, in and out, and eventually he finds the rhythm of it again. He feels his voice again, in his mouth.

"Thunder," he says. "To the west. Someone's coming. Someone important. There's--" He closes his eyes. He tries to remember the feeling. He clutches the edges of the robe so tightly his fingers burn. "Blue-lightning color. And smoke. Ah-- uh-- toothache feeling. Maybe a-- a--" He breathes through it. "Thunder, to the west."

Minako's expression is serious and considered.

She nods.

"You did a good job," she says.

"I need a bath," Yuuri says, the back of his hand cover his mouth. He might throw up again.

Minako, sitting on the cot with him, turns him to look at her. Into her serious, dark eyes.

"You did a good job today, Yuuri," she says.

Yuuri shakes his head. "They wanted good omens. Good tellings," he says.

"You were nervous," she says. "It shows back to you what you bring in. We've talked about this."

_It's a mirror_ , she'd said.

"I'm sorry," he answers. "I'm sorry."

Minako looks at him for a long moment. "Don't bathe in the lake," she says. "Take the back path, to my apartments. Use the tub. Clean yourself up and be back here. You still have official duties. You're the resident heir."

Yuuri nods. The linen of the robe is stiff where it un-creases from his body. His legs are sore and a little wobbly as he walks across the floor, down the hall leading away from the throne room.

Many of the rooms in the palace are connected to each other-- Minako told him something once, about it being a metaphor. It's part of what makes the palace so defensible; in the years they have lived here, they have made the doors and walls thicker, harder to break through. But at a time like this, it makes it easier to pick subtler, stranger routes through the palace and to the outside. One room slips easily into a corridor that would have been for servants once and the corridor slips through to a locked door that Yuuri opens easily with a key. Through the storeroom and past the loom that stands, unoccupied, and eventually down another corridor and through another set of doors and a few more and--

Yuuri's outside, and then it's just a jaunt down the path to Minako's cottage.

There's a small yard, fenced in with a thicket of bamboo she trims back religiously, and just beyond it grows a tall magnolia tree with a branch that stretches into the yard. From it, they've hung a rainwater shower, just for moments like these. Yuuri pulls off the linen robe, draping it over the low wall of Minako's porch. He steps into the small, enclosed platform of the shower and gets himself clean.

The water is sun warm on Yuuri's skin. He lets just enough down to get himself wet. The cake of soap Minako keeps in pottery beside the platform lathers well enough to pull the sweat and paint and makeup from his skin. He pulls the lever to rinse himself off, and he stands there in the sunlight for just a moment, the air cold on his skin, drying.

Yuuri rolls his neck. Sighs.

He steps out of the shower and wraps himself back into a sheet to dry, and he begins to refold the linen robe, making sure all the pleats and folds are correct. He wraps it back into the thin, light paper Minako unwrapped it from and settles it back into the cedar chest.

There are other things in there, things Yuuri has seen but are not his to touch, to use, to understand. His hand slides over the top of the chest, catching on the symmetrical carving of a magnolia flower over the top. Yuuri doesn't know if magnolias are just Minako's sigils, or if they belong to all oracles. If the war hadn't come, if he'd been sent to Sanktpet to learn, would he identify himself through them, too, instead of the boar of his own family?

Yuuri stands and pulls on his own clothes. The trousers are of a finer material than the ones he wore in the fields, dyed a deep color. His shirt cuts close to his body, vented by finely woven netting in wide triangles at the sides. The gold thread and beads and net were all scavenged from a gown that was Mari's once, before she took a knight's armor. Now that Yuuri is the heir, though, the finery is more important for him.

Yuuri carefully fastens the tight cuffs at his wrists and the tall false collar at the top of his neck. Yuuri smooths his hand over his stomach. Takes a deep breath. He pushes his hair away from his face.

He slips into his sandals at the door and walks carefully back to the palace, down the real path.

This part is as much a performance as the dance was. Yuuri's spine is straight and his feet are flat to his sandals. There's an intensity to everyone gathered around the palace. They haven't hired a knight's company in years-- not within Yuuri's memory. The idea that imperials might be immanent enough that they need to pay for protection is terrifying. The idea that this will be their last summer along the lake-- that they're going to wander back-- is terrifying.

They're pretending, right now, to be busy. They're pretending not to be waiting.

Nishigori peels away from the door to walk behind Yuuri, tall and broad under his armor.

"Your helmet looks good," Yuuri comments, under his breath. "How'd you get the tusks to shine like that?"

Nishigori doesn't say anything, but Yuuri can see how he straightens with pride.

The doors part. Yuuri's not sure who opens them; he keeps his eyes fixed forward.

"Yuuko says you're going to be great," Nishigori comments, following him from behind but close. "Take a deep breath."

Yuuri does.

Nishigori pounds the floor with his staff, and it echoes loudly.

Yuuri steps through the doors, back into the throne room. No longer oracle, but instead heir.

* * *

When the woman who played the drum returns to the room, Yuuri is not with her and her hair is tied back. She's dressed the same way, but for the addition of a bronze collar like the duchess's. She sits back down on a cushion on the floor, apart from Viktor, to the right of the duchess.

She bows before sitting up and laying her hand on her chest. "I am Okukawa Minako," she says. "Advisor to Duchess Katsuki Hiroko and oracle to the court. We will be joined soon by Katsuki Yuuri, heir to the duchy and Katsuki Mari, knight operator herself."

Viktor bows his head slightly, but no more. "My co-conspirator, Christophe Giacometti, has already met Knight Katsuki and speaks highly of her. We were surprised that your nation was interested in paying for our services, given that Knight Operator Katsuki has proven so adept for such a long time and we haven't seen imperial activity in this area in quite some time."

"The leader of our guard, Nishigori Takeshi, saw evidence of imperial scouting some fifty miles from here," Okukawa says. "Hardly any distance for an imperial sortie to travel when incentivized by an abundance of grain."

"This is a crucial season," the duchess says. "We have read the signs. We know we must make our return to Hasetsu this autumn, and the grain we grow here must sustain us through the travel and into the summer while we establish the wheat. We have kept a great deal of our harvest these past years cached safely, but times will already be lean."

"Were the scouts captured?" Viktor asks.

Okukawa shakes her head. "We are certain that they are unaware of our own observations. This is also why we ask you to approach our palace from the lakeward edge and why we have asked your company to come the same way."

Ah.

"My company is camped a day's journey from your border," he says. "If we find our arrangements amenable for each other, they can be here quickly and discreetly."

A door opens, and a guard cries, clearly, into the room, "Knight Operator Katsuki Mari!"

Viktor rises quickly and easily as a woman strides in from the right of the throne. Her hair is cropped short but is wild about her face-- like the petals of a sunflower. Her expression is stern and severe, pressed into a steep frown. She looks at Viktor, assessing, serious.

"Knight Operator Feltsman," she says, nodding.

Viktor bows.

Knight Operator Katsuki stays standing, and Viktor keeps his head bowed.

"You're much less familiar than Giacometti," she says.

_Fuck, Chris_ , Viktor thinks

"He was still friendly once I made it clear I wasn't interested in having sex with him, though," she says.

" _Mari!_ " Okukawa admonishes from the side.

Viktor finds himself laughing, in spite of himself, watching Knight Operator Katsuki shrug. She pulls a pipe from the band of her trousers, a box of tobacco from a pocket.

"I apologize for Knight Operator Giacometti," he says. "We do not send him to court often, for good reason."

"You can call him his name," she says. "We'll all be living in each others' pocket soon enough. We can't have you camped out in the woods forever, especially when the summer rains come."

She finishes loading her pipe before she fiddles with a matchbook. She lights the match and in one motion kneels down to sit and lights her pipe. It's practiced and graceful.

Viktor sits back down himself. The smell of tobacco fills the air.

There's silence.

"So, the company will be you, Giacometti, and who else?" Knight Operator Katsuki asks.

"Operators Jean-Jacque Leroy and Otabek Altin," Viktor says. "And my company includes a medic-- Phichit Chulanont, who I'm told studied under a healer who trained--"

There's a sound, enormous in the room. A door thrown open and the striking of a staff on the floor. It echoes and Viktor is standing, his hand to his holster immediately.

"Katsuki Yuuri," the guard calls from the back of the room. "Oracle and heir to Hasetsu."

It's hard, in the backlit sunlight of the room, to see him. He's just a silhouette, initially, pulled tall and straight and proud into the room.

He steps in, and his footsteps are confident and silent. He's dressed differently, his dark hair wet and slicked back. His expression is serious and schooled. He's wearing something formal-- tailored sharply to his body and stitched through with gold thread and fine netting. It makes clear the shape and structure of his strong body (his body that dances, his body that might dance the future), but also the absolute authority of him. The shape of his power.

Viktor's throat goes dry. He kneels again, as Katsuki Yuuri strides back into the room.

Somehow, he is another person, again. Different from the drunken dancer, the bathing beauty, the writhing oracle. Now, this multitudinous figure passes Viktor seriously, to sit to the left of his mother's throne.

Viktor carefully returns to his seated position.

"Ah," the duchess says. "Now that we are all here, I think discussion can finally begin."


	3. seeds

It's tricky work, guiding the knights from the lakeward edge into the palace, where they can be hidden in the deep cellars-- in the armory-- without pulling them through the front. It's tricky work, and Yuuri knows it, because he scouted the path they were to take himself, coordinating with Mari, Nishigori, and one of the Knight Operators.

The process is, roughly, that Yuuri, Mari, and the Knight Operator will hike from the waterfall to the palace, off a known trail and through the back, before meeting up to the road as late as they can manage. Then the knights will be placed in the armory under the cover of darkness, when hopefully it will be too dark to see the huge gates open and the hulking masses of the knights slip inside. Nishigori is going to keep watch from the back walls of the palace, looking for signs when their travel is most obvious. 

That's the plan. 

Yuuri stands at the waterfall, radiant with worry, waiting. It's been a week since they met with Knight Operator Feltsman. It's been a week since Knight Operator Feltsman found Yuuri naked, in the lake. It's been a week since Yuuri danced for him, and a week since he walked into the room where he knelt, before Yuuri's mother and sister and godmother. 

It's been a week; it's basically been hell.

Knight Operator Feltsman ( _ call me Viktor, Lord Duke Katsuki, please _ ) is the most startlingly beautiful man Yuuri has ever met. 

He's tall and slender-- willowy almost, in a way that implies grace and strength held in the long lines of his shoulder, his back, his legs. He has a waterfall of silvery hair that drapes from his head into his eyes, just a little bit, even when he has it tied up into a bun or braided into a straight line down his back. And his eyes-- his eyes remind Yuuri of something, a memory of childhood, the stream that ran so cold in the winter it turned to ice. Clearer, brighter, truer than glass. Knight Operator Feltsman is so beautiful it stirs something in Yuuri, something that makes his stomach twist and his face heat. 

Yuuri hates it. Hates the feeling, that is, not the man's beautiful smile full of clean teeth and the spray of faint golden freckles across the pale skin of his nose. 

The idea of hiking from the waterfall, through the woods, with Knight Operator Feltsman and his sister is enough to make Yuuri want to throw himself into the cold, cold water of the fall and disappear.

But he doesn't. He stands there, and he waits. 

"Ah!" Yuuri hears, and he turns around. "My Lord Duke Katsuki, how are you?" 

Knight Operator Feltsman steps from the path leading from the waterfall over to Yuuri. He's wearing a shirt with a wide collar-- it looks well made, and the unbleached fiber looks like it's resistant to showing sweat and wear. His thigh holster has his pistol seated securely in it, and his boots look comfortable and sturdy. His hair is pulled up into a high ponytail, but his bangs still fall into his eyes, tucked behind his ear. 

Yuuri swallows drily. "I'm not actually the duke, Knight Operator," Yuuri says. "Please-- just call me Yuuri. Everyone else does."

Knight Operator Feltsman shrugs. His shoulders rise and fall and he says, "My Lord Duke Katsuki, everyone else just calls me Viktor."

Yuuri bites his lower lip. 

"It would not offend me," Viktor says, his voice sounding ever so slightly hopeful.

"Viktor," Yuuri says. "Please, call me just Yuuri."

He smiles. It's dazzling. "Anything you ask, just Yuuri."

He strides over near him, places his hand on his hip and looks out into the woods. "Is your sister coming?" he asks. 

Yuuri nods. "Getting Seito through the woods is difficult," he says. "She's not agile."

Knight Oper--  _ Viktor _ nods. "That's fine," he says. "Most of the crew is in similar shape. They should be here tomorrow."

Yuuri looks up the path, through the woods, and imagines them all. Three more Knights, plus operators and the mechanic and their gear. Their rooms are already cleared-- they're bunking all together, as much privacy as the compound can afford to give them.

Seito is round and red and low. The low center of gravity makes her harder to knock over in combat. She's not a terribly fast model or a particularly powerful one. Just enough to draw fire, to distract, while people run or while the cavalry arrives. She hisses with hydraulic smoke and offgas as she comes through the woods. Mari's voice sounds strange through the crackle of the speaker, centered on Seito's chest, high in the air. 

"Let's go," she says. "Follow me."

Viktor nods, pushing his hair out of his eyes and heading down the path with Yuuri and Mari. 

They make it a ways before he says, "It's different here than further East. Everything is so alive here."

Yuuri nods. "We've been lucky," he says. 

The birds are loud in the branches. The air is rich with the scream of insects. 

Everything is alive. Yuuri hasn't been east often, but he does know what fields scarred by missile fire looks like, fields stomped barren by the footprints of knights. 

Seito steps delicately, footprints mostly hidden by solid rock or footprints that came before. They've always moved carefully through here. Better for the bandits to think that there's no one here at all than people, than the bounty of the rice paddies just beyond. 

"Do you take work like this often?" Yuuri asks.

Viktor shrugs. "All of the jobs are different," he says. "They're all like this; they're all paid. But I've never been somewhere like this before, and-- well, usually we make camp ourselves."

"Oh," Yuuri says. "If you prefer we could--"

Viktor shakes his head. "No, no-- it's nice. It will be nice to not be at the mercy of the rain for a little while."

Yuuri shrugs. He steps over a root. Looks up at the canopy of the trees, to see how hidden Seito is. Nothing too suspicious moves. 

"The roof isn't that good," he says. 

Viktor laughs. 

* * *

Yuuri stands along the wall with Nishigori and Minako, watching the rounded, hulking forms of their knights pick their way delicately through the woods, the barest quivers of the treetops, the shaking of bamboo. The light is rapidly fading, and with their peripheral lights off, the knights become invisible in the darkness. Harder to keep track of where they're going. Yuuri peers through the binocular for as long as he can stand, in the approaching dusk, and when he can't stand it anymore, he settles for pulling his shawl over his shoulders and worrying his lip between his teeth.

"Yuuri," Nishigori says, his voice sounding ghostly inside his armor. "You should calm down. This is all just a precaution."

Yuuri wishes he could tell Nishigori the things he feels when he dances. He wishes he could make him feel the startling certainty. The clarity.

Instead, Yuuri stands on the wall and listens to him try to be comforting. 

It's not cold. It's barely even chilly. But Yuuri feels anxiety as much as air temperature leave the crawl of goosebumps along his arms, down his back. 

Yuuri waits, and waits, until low lantern light appears on the edge of the path out of the woods, and following in the shape of a couple of hunched, low figures and then, following, the rounded and large shapes of three knights, slow and lumbering. 

Yuuri has never run faster than now, pattering down the flights of low stairs to the open bay of the cellars below the palace. He flies, his shawl like wings behind him, and he stops there, to look at them all. 

Four of them, all together, all at once. Yuuri's never seen so many all in one place, active and ready to go-- ready to be. Three of them are low and squat-- models like Seito that sit closer to the ground. They're distinct though, in their own ways. One of them is painted deep turquoise green, with handfuls of purple detailing, filigree swirling over the rounded shoulders. It's a pre-Imperial decorative style, one Yuuri recognizes from the Old Kingdom. Another is lilac and far more geometric in its decoration-- triangles that fly and pull the eye upward to a spade-shaped head. The false eyes above the vents in the cockpit glitter in the low lantern light. A third is the unpainted color of its steel, but decorated with what look like bright, floral patterns. Farmer's art, Yuuri realizes. It moves on feet Yuuri has never seen before; three-pronged instead of flat and flush to the earth. Yuuri wonders if that affects its stability.

"Ho there!" Someone calls, and Yuuri looks down from the tops of the knights to someone walking with them, carrying a dimmed lantern and wearing an enormous pack. Yuuri looks at them for a wild minute before running from the top of the stairs to where they stand.

Phichit. 

Yuuri laughs. He can't help it. Phichit does too. 

"They told me they were bringing a healer; I didn't realize it would be you!" Yuuri exclaims.

Phichit laughs. "When Chris told me that we were going to Lake Kuter, I lost my mind. It's been too long! I can't believe I get to spend a whole summer with you again!"

Familiar thunder breaks the earth as Yuuri pulls away from Phichit's embrace. A fourth emerges from the wood, to walk toward the palace. 

Yuuri gasps. 

"Yeah," Phichit says. "Nadya's a beaut, isn't she?"

Yuuri remembers evacuating Hasetsu. He remembers the fire. He remembers running, in the night. He remembers what they left.

Yuuri remembers all this, and he remembers the slender, strong fingers of the knight in front of him, scooping up himself and his mother, and carrying them both into safety. 

It overwhelms him, for just a moment. 

She's tall and thin and fast. Decorative and delicate in a way none of the other knights are. Yuuri swallows. 

"Viktor pilots her," Phichit says. "And Chris has Caspar, JJ has Felix, and Otabek is in Aiman."

Viktor pilots the tall, beautiful knight that saved Yuuri, all that time ago. 

It makes something twist and shift a little, in his heart. 

"Come on," Yuuri says, instead. We should get you settled into a room. We have three rooms set aside for you all, but I could move in with Minako and give you my garret for the summer."

"I couldn't ask you to do that," Phichit says. "But I am going to make you carry my pack."

"You need a clinic," Yuuri says. "You're a healer."

"I usually work fireside," Phichit says. "Or out of a tent. I'll be fine."

"I'm not going to make you work out of a room with a bunch of dirty knight operators and all their mess and sweat," Yuuri says. "That can't be good for your patients."

Phichit's pack is heavy on Yuuri's shoulders, the frame digging a little into his back, the straps worn and damp with sweat. There's a soft tinkling from the chimes Phichit keeps on the top of the rucksack closure.

Yuuri climbs up the stairs and heads into the palace, Phichit beside him. 

"You know I'm usually patching up the knight operators, right?" Phichit answers, rolling his shoulders and stretching his neck. "Usually I'm setting shoulders and doing stitches, not doing bedsit for plagues or pneumonia."

"Still," Yuuri says. "You should have your own space. Medicine is...important."

"Yuuri, you're the heir to a dukedom," Phichit says. They whisper as they wind down the halls, to the next staircase. "I'm pretty sure you're more important than me."

Yuuri shrugs. "I don't know," he says. "I'll just be wherever for the summer. You need your space. You're a doctor."

Phichit sighs. They keep heading up the stairs until Yuuri opens the door to the garret, the space narrow and strange.

Phichit looks at it. "You're really going to insist on this, aren't you."

Yuuri nods. "I know you must be-- it must be exhausting, not having space to yourself most of the time, too." Yuuri pulls the pack off.

Phichit looks at him. Smiles a little. "Yuuri, I'm really okay anywhere."

Yuuri picks up his trunk, by the door. It has everything in it. Always ready to go. "I'll just be wherever," he says. "It's fine. I know you must be tired, from traveling."

Phichit undoes the closure on his pack, pulling out a sleeping roll and a few bundles of clothes. He shrugs. "We just came from beyond the woods. The hiking wasn't as bad as it usually is, actually, even if we had to be careful." He pulls out a small box and sets it beside the door. "The mountains are really terrible."

There's a knock on the door before it opens again, suddenly. "Yuuri," Mari says. "Leave Phichit alone. Come meet the rest of the knights."

Yuuri nods. "Sorry," he says. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

Phichit laughs. "Yeah," he says. "All the way through the end of the season."

* * *

Viktor pilots Nadya carefully into the space of the cellar underneath the compound. It's the garage now, Viktor supposes, or technically an armory even if theirs are there only weapons and armor in it. Viktor guides Nadya into her resting position with her knees folded to her chest. Beside her, Chris brings in Caspar, who rests in a low squat with his hands on the earth and his rear on the ground. Viktor extricates himself from his cockpit and stretches, and Chris and Otabek and JJ do the same. 

"Good lord," Chris says. "It's harder in the armor-- when I met up with Mari, it was just a quick jaunt."

Viktor laughs, sighing. He rolls his shoulders. Otabek pulls himself out of Aiman, her lower chest putting him down much closer to the ground. JJ is already out of Felix and pulling off his jumpsuit, stretching theatrically. 

"We won't have to head out that way for months," Viktor says. "This'll be an easy assignment. Nice and quiet-- this is a real cherry you found for us, Chris."

Chris nods. He unbuttons the top of his jumpsuit, letting the chest panel peel away so he can pull the top of his jumpsuit off. He runs his hands through his hair. "We'll do some repairs, find work for the winter, and get fat on steady grain," he says. "Maybe I'll find a comely lad and finally be made an honest man."

JJ laughs. "Speak for yourself, Giacometti, I have Isabella waiting for me back in the village," he says. 

A pair of guards close the wooden doors to the garage. The are finally hidden here. It all went according to plan, although they won't know for a couple of days whether or not they were seen by scouts. It seems promising, though. 

"Right, right, your betrothed," Chris says. "How long until that wedding?"

JJ laughs, shrugs. "She says until the war is over," he answers. 

"She wants you to die a virgin, Leroy," Otabek answers. "Where are our quarters?"

Someone with a lantern, standing by a door, gestures. "Come this way," she says. "I'm Nishigori Yuuko-- a caretaker for the palace. I'm going to help you settle in."

Otabek opens a large side panel on Aiman's leg, revealing a hold with a duffle bag. He throws it over his shoulder and fishes out a smaller knapsack before closing the side panel. 

"I have my things cached at the cave," Viktor says. "Chris? JJ?"

JJ has already retrieved his bag from a hanging point on one of Felix's shoulders, and Chris pulls a bag from a hold in Caspar's foot. 

Viktor turns and smiles at the woman with the lantern. "Lead on!" He says. 

She smiles, gracious, and leads them up the stone steps and into the palace proper. It's dark, and there's a low murmur of people eating, getting ready for bed. The corridors are empty, though, and narrow and dark in the closed doors and lack of lamplight. There are places along the walls where lamps would have hung, maybe in better times. 

She takes them down a hall, to a pair of doors. "We have you here. We're sorry it's not much-- we already sleep in close quarters to keep everyone in the compound at night and space is at a premium."

Otabek opens a door and steps into a room. "We're not outside," he says. 

"Thank you," Chris says. "It seems lovely, madam, and better accommodations than we usually get."

"Remember that summer on the steppe?" JJ says, following Otabek into the room. "We could never get that yurt to work."

Viktor opens the door to the other room. "Where's Phichit?" He asks. "Our healer?"

"Oh, Phichit's with Yuuri," she says. "They go way back."

"Really?" Viktor asks. "I had no idea-- will he be with us or--"

"Yuuri's being foolish again," she answers. "I think he's going to try to give Phichit his own quarters and sleep outside in a hammock all summer." She rolls her eyes. "He should be around to meet you, soon."

Viktor smiles. Nods. "Thank you," he says. "We're very glad to be here."

She smiles back. "Of course," she says. "Welcome to Hasetsu."

Viktor steps into the room with Chris. It's small, but it's dry and there's a window and the thick mattress on the floor looks a sight more comfortable than the sleeping roll Viktor's been using for the past months.

Chris shuts the door, and Viktor pulls off his sweaty shirt and trousers. There's a basin with a washcloth in the corner, the pitcher already filled with water. 

It's cold on his skin. He sighs, wiping himself off carefully before setting it aside for Chris to use. 

He throws himself down on the mattress, and he doesn't have a moment to think before he's asleep. 

* * *

The sun rises early, high and bright, and it wakes up every bird of the air and cicada in the trees. It all comes alive, all at once, and Viktor groans loudly into the shirt he used as a pillow last night. The air is heavy and warm and a little damp. The sound of Viktor's own breath echoes against the walls of the room, empty of decoration and strangely hollow.

"I hate farms, Vitya, I take it all back," Chris moans.

Outside, the sound of people milling about filters through the bamboo shade in front of the window and the wood of the door. Viktor's back and shoulders ache from traveling as he sits up, and he rolls his neck deeply, sighing. Chris, on the floor, opposite him, has his palms dug firmly into the sockets of his eyes, long fingers reaching into his golden curls. 

"Early rise," Viktor comments, brilliantly. 

Chris's bag sits beside him on the floor, still sealed tight. 

"Fuck," Viktor says. All of his shit and the rest of the company's gear is stashed at the waterfall. He's going to have to hike out to get it. The thought of heading back through the woods so soon after the tedious, slow, and careful operation of moving them to the palace last night has him exhausted all over again already. 

There's a knock on their door and Viktor stands up without thinking and answers it, pushing his tangled hair out of his eyes. 

"Oh!" Yuuri says, blushing to the roots of his dark hair before he immediately pivots on his heels and turns around. "I'm sorry; I didn't realize you'd be naked!"

In front of Yuuri, the door across the hall opens, and JJ stands there, actually naked. 

Yuuri gasps and turns back around, where Viktor stands, still shirtless, in just his underwear. 

Yuuri just closes his eyes. He has a tray in his hands. 

"Hello there," JJ comments, laughing a little. 

Viktor frowns at him from the other side of Yuuri. 

"I brought you breakfast," Yuuri says, his voice wavering with the mildest anxiety. "I'm so sorry."

JJ closes the door. Viktor looks back to Yuuri, down at the tray. There's four covered bowls. 

"Rice," Yuuri says. "And eggs and natto. And there's tea, in the kitchen, but I don't know if you all drink it."

Viktor reaches out and carefully takes the tray. "Thank you," he says. "Where is the kitchen?"

* * *

 

* * *

The water in the paddies is cool, but not cold. It feels good against Yuuri's skin, lapping up to his mid-shins, just underneath where he has his pants cuffed. He feels the mud well up between his toes and the winnowing of water as he carefully places line after line after line of seedlings into the soil. They have to do this quickly, and they all work together to get as much of it into the paddies as possible. It's hard work. It's work that unites them, tighter and closer and more real than any memory of Hasetsu at this point. 

Yuuri plants row after row after row of seedlings, and he hopes with every fiber of his being that he won't have to see any of the knights at this point for the remainder of their stay, and that the ground will just swallow him up and he'll never been seen by anyone ever again, and he'll never see anyone naked ever again, especially unexpectedly while his hands are full of breakfast and he can't adequately cover his face and flee in shame. 

"Yuuri," Yuuko says, just a row ahead of him, rising up to brush her hair from her face, "you're not still worried about that, are you?"

"I don't even know his name," Yuuri groans. The flat-woven tray of seedlings he took from the nursery is now empty. He stands up, closing his eyes against the early afternoon sun and sighs, heavily. 

"It happens in close quarters," Yuuko says for probably the fiftieth time today. "He was just naked!"

"Honestly, JJ is more tickled by your response than anything," someone says behind them, and Yuuri turns around so quickly he nearly throws himself over. 

He's tall and slender, with a crop of blonde curls, round sunglasses. He's wearing the same close-fitting clothes most knight operators do, and he's carrying two tall containers, wrapped kerchiefs. 

"I brought you lunch," he says. His voice is accented slightly. "I'm Christophe Giacometti-- one of the company you hired."

Yuuri bows automatically. "Katsuki Yuuri," he says.

There's light laughter. "Yes," he says. "I'm well aware, although I think I may be the one who should bow instead."

Yuuri shakes his head. "No, no," he says. "Please don't. I'm just Yuuri-- I'm just Yuuri."

"Yuuri-just-Yuuri," Viktor calls, from a few yards behind, smiling and clothed and running his hands through the long, long waves of his hair. "Good morning. Thank you for the breakfast."

"Viktor, you fool, it's afternoon, not morning," Giacometti answers, still looking straight ahead, at Yuuri. 

Viktor smiles, all innocence. Roguish, a little. Yuuri tries not to think about seeing him with his hair a mess and in his eyes, and his chest bare to the air.

"Yakov used to call him a ditz, Katsuki Yuuri, did you know?" Giacometti says.

"Hey!" Viktor cries, glaring.

Yuuri feels his stomach rumble, suddenly, loudly. 

Giacometti raises the pile of dishes up from the handle. "I think that's call for lunch," he says.

Yuuri turns to Yuuko. She shoos them off with a gesture of her hand. "I'm still working and I eat with Takeshi," she says. "Go ahead, you did your rows."

Yuuri huffs a short laugh. "Okay, okay," he says. "Come with me."

It's not a far walk, from the edge of the paddies on the other side of the courtyard, to the edge of the lake, and it's not far from there to the spot between the trees, where the grass grows soft and drains fairly quickly, where Yuuri likes to sit sometimes and eat lunch.

"It's lovely," Viktor says, looking around.

"I didn't realize bringing you lunch would involve a hike," Giacometti murmurs. 

"I'm sorry," Yuuri says. "It's just nice here."

Viktor sits down, onto the grass, and Yuuri follows. Giacometti unties the linen and pulls out three sealed bowls. Inside each is a serving of rice, a couple of boiled eggs, a generous piece of chicken, and some cabbage. Yuuri sighs happily and tucks in. It's good. It's always good. It's better, of course, when it's hot, but it's still good now. 

Yuuri realizes he's nearly inhaled half of his portion when he looks up, finishing his bite. "I'm sorry," he says, once his mouth is no longer full. "I've been planting all morning and then I have to meet with Minako."

"You've been impossible to find all morning," Giacometti comments, eating demurely. "JJ and Otabek still haven't met you, and wherever you've hidden Phichit, it's been quite effective."

"He's unpacking," Yuuri says. "I gave him my quarters and I'm going to stay with Minako or in the throne room for the summer."

"You're a duke," Giacometti comments. 

"I'm an heir and it doesn't really mean anything," Yuuri says. "Not since the war started and not since we were run out of Hasetsu."

"Don't you want to go back?" Viktor asks. "Isn't that why you hired us?"

Yuuri takes a bite. Tries to think about how he would mean this, how to say it most accurately. 

"We are going back," Yuuri says. "We want to. We're going to. Since we left, it's all we've all really wanted. It was home." He looks away from Viktor's clear blue eyes and at the green grass underneath. "That doesn't mean I should get special treatment and it doesn't mean that there aren't more important needs than my own."

Viktor looks at him and smiles. 

"That's lovely, you know," he says. 

Yuuri shakes his head. "That's responsibility," he answers. 

Giacometti laughs. "He's an heir, Viktor," he says. "Not a vagabond with no country like us."

Yuuri looks at both of them, struck by it suddenly. 

"What about when you retire?" He asks. "What about when the war is over?"

Viktor laughs, a kind of laugh that isn't really a laugh at all. It's strange to hear. “A soldier’s retirement plan is death in battle,” he murmurs. “And even if I don't, I have nowhere to go to. I was from Sanktpet, before it was razed."

Yuuri feels his stomach drop, suddenly. "All of you?" He asks, his voice quiet. 

Viktor shrugs. "JJ has a fiancé, but she says they can't marry until the war is over. And Chris and Otabek and I-- we're all orphans. I'm the only one from Sanktpet but--"

"Sanktpet wasn't the only city the empire destroyed," Giacometti says. "We're all of us refugees. You too, I suppose. You just brought the city with you."

It's uncanny. In the same way that Viktor laughs without laughing, Giacometti smiles without smiling. 

Yuuri looks at both of them, seriously. Gravely. 

He lays his chopsticks into his dish, places his dish on the ground. He bows forward, before both of them. 

"When the war is over," he says, "and when you are ready to retire, you will come and stay in Hasetsu."

"My lord duke," Giacometti says immediately.

"This is an offer made in all seriousness and with all the authority I can wield," Yuuri says. "Please. If your company can protect us through this growing season, there will always be a hearth for you in Hasetsu. In the palace itself."

It's an impulsive, formal thing he's done. It's all at once sudden and terribly official, political. But Yuuri knows, sitting with these men he barely knows, that he cannot leave them--

Adrift. 

"We thank you, most humbly," Viktor says, in front of him. When Yuuri looks up, he and Giacometti are both bowed themselves. "We are honored by your generosity."

The seriousness of it crashes around Yuuri, clatters into his ears and heart. He shakes his head a couple of time. He rises quickly. "I'm late," he says. "Please excuse me."

The ground is firm under his bare feet.

* * *

 

Viktor sits with Chris in the glen, watching Yuuri disappear, as suddenly as the offer to stay was given. 

"Oh, Vitya," Chris says, shaking his head. "What have you gotten us into?"

"Me?" Viktor asks, turning back to him. "You're the one who found the job!"

"You're the one who got drunk and danced with the heir nearly a year ago," Chris says back. He finishes eating, and he looks at the food left in Yuuri bowl and finishes that, too. It's been awhile since last they worked with people who had enough to go around, much less this much to go around and so delicious, too. 

"I didn't know he'd--" Viktor shakes his head. He picks himself up from the grass and brushes off his pants. "I didn't know." 

Chris shrugs. "Do you want to return the dishes, or should I?" He asks.

"Can you?" Viktor says. "I want to get a better feel for the property here."

Chris nods. He stacks the dishes back together and ties them back up with the cloth. "Start training soon?" He asks.

Viktor nods. "I'm thinking we start scouting at least four hours march forward, just so we know firsthand what's there. And I'd like to know what their guard is working with, in terms of skill and equipment-- maybe you and JJ do a training in a week?"

Chris nods. "Sounds good," he says. "Do we know if there are maps?"

"Not yet," Viktor says. "I'll arrange a meeting with the duchess."

"Sounds good," he answers. "I'll see you for dinner."

"Will do, boss," Chris replies. 

Viktor places his hands on his hips. Assesses the lay of the land forward; the curve of the lake ahead and the forest behind. The path he came up from the fields in. 

Viktor looks around and decides to head down the path he saw Yuuri follow. 

It rambles roughly parallel from where the lake runs until it diverts a little bit, into a thicket of bamboo and a tall, curving magnolia tree. Suddenly, off the path, is a house. 

Viktor pauses, looking at it. It's in the low, broad style of the palace, but small. Clearly meant for just one person. There's a few pair of shoes in front of it, laid along the porch. There's a line hanging from the roof to a branch of a tree nearby. 

Viktor stands there, looking at it. 

It's strange, how these moments sneak up on him; how there are these glimpses, along all of these jobs, of a life he could have had once. Of the strange, impossible flourishing of people despite the empire. Of the houses but at the edge of palaces, flowing with people and the flooded fields full of rice. 

Viktor tries to imagine himself beyond the confines of his armor. Beyond the cadre. 

Viktor tries. 

There's the sound of laughter, high and small behind him. Viktor turns around. 

There are three small children behind him. Triplets-- identical. They all have their hair pulled back into small buns, and there's mischief written on their round features. 

Viktor smiles. "Good afternoon, ladies," he says.

They giggle. 

One of them, her arms behind her back, swaying back and forth, steps a little bit forward. "We know how to peek," she says. 

Another nods. "It's a secret," she says. "We like to watch Yuuri and Minako-san, but Mama says it's private. But there's a spot, where we can peek."

"What do they do in there?" Viktor asks. 

"They dance," another one says, spinning a neat little circle. "Mama says that one day when we're older, Minako-san might teach us."

"She used to dance in the capitol," one of them says. "Yuuri was supposed to dance in the capitol."

"In Sanktpet?" Viktor asks. 

They all nod, together.

Viktor looks back at the house, behind him. 

"Isn't it wrong to peek?" He asks them. 

They all giggle. They can't be older than five. 

Viktor smiles at them. He turns, to look at the cottage. 

He remembers Yuuri's hands twisting over himself, cutting shapes like flying into the air. He remembers the look on his face, the way he looked beyond the room, through the air. Viktor remembers his chest bowed forward, his legs at angles. He remembers Yuuri dancing so differently from the dancing that night at the party. Viktor wonders what kind of dancing he does hidden away here in the cottage, beyond the palace. 

The temptation to stay with the girls and spy is fierce.

He turns back around. "Do you three ladies have names?" He asks. "I think you may have a mother who is looking for you."

* * *

Yuuri stretches, feeling his muscles pull and tug against each other. He bends forward at the hips, bringing his arms up over his head to hang backward behind him, stretching his calves and thighs and back and shoulder all at once. He breathes into it, letting his arms hang lower, the tension tugging from his elbows, pulling against the weight of his body. Yuuri touches his toes, side to side, laying on the floor, his legs pulled directly in front of him or pulled wide. Yuuri stretches his sides, bringing one arm over his head in a graceful continuous arc, bending over from his hips. Yuuri stretches his hands, pulling his fingers down away from his palms. Yuuri weeds the tension and work out of his body, feeling himself grow pliant and loose. Yuuri feels the work of the morning drain away and out of him, and he feels himself become empty enough to hold the flow of the vision that pours into him when he dances. 

_ We had music every time _ , Minako told him once, of the school in Sanktpet, the school they would have sent Yuuri to had Mari not had to take up the armor of a knighthood, had Yuuri not become heir, had the capitol not been razed and pillaged before Yuuri's birth, had the empire not invaded, had the war never come at all. 

_ We had music that played even during stretches and practice _ , Minako had said.  _ Every room and hall of the Oracular College was filled with music. _

Minako's residence is filled only with the empty slide and shuffle of his feet across the floor. 

Yuuri slides his foot along the floor in a wide, sweeping arc. His right toe is pointed downward, away from the ankle. The movement drags his toe slightly against the floorboards. When Yuuri brings his foot back to the left, there is the long sort of moment Yuuri associates with dancing of all kinds, oracular or not. An asking of permission, not of a partner but of the force that places the future into him.  There's a heavy-air feeling, like how everything feels before a storm comes. It crowds close to Yuuri's skin, like the press of another body.

There is a moment, dancing, where Yuuri throws himself through the air, and hopes something on the light will catch him. There's something precious in that moment, something powered by a raw, uncultured belief. Yuuri throws himself, and trusts that the voices that lie between the air will catch him.

Yuuri throws himself and believes he will be caught.

Yuuri never dances alone; he never has and he's sure at this point that he never will. 

Yuuri sweeps his arms forward. He draws the rest of himself back. 

Yuuri lets the feeling in, and he dances.

He dances and there is in him, of him, the patter of rain. The roll of something like thunder. 

Yuuri feels it, he feels it, he feels it. 

He feels everything, all of it, until there are cool hands against his arms and a voice saying urgently, "Yuuri! Yuuri!"

Yuuri blinks a few times. Crickets and sparrows. Budding. He feels his own hand fly to his abdomen, feeling something there suddenly. Something important that dissipates quickly as he blinks and his vision clears and he's looking at Minako; he's on the floor. 

"Don't do this on your own," she says, her voice stern and crisp with worry. "You could get hurt or lost or both."

Yuuri nods. His mouth feels thick. Minako pulls her canteen from her hip and hands it to Yuuri, who drinks it down quickly.

"Don't scare me like that," she says. 

Yuuri nods. "I'm sorry," he says. "I just-- I had to know."

Minako shakes her head. "You have to stop worrying," she says. "You have to. It's not good for you."

Yuuri sits there, in her house, for a long time, the shadows gradually lengthening. 

"I have to know," Yuuri says. "We all do. This is risky."

"No more than staying is," she says. "We know we have a season. We know Hasetsu is empty and free. We know and we've sent scouts. No amount of-- of  _ frenzying _ yourself will change that."

Yuuri lets his head hang. He drapes his arms over his knees. He nods. 

"Minako," Yuuri says. "I'm so scared."

Minako looks at him, her eyes soft and warm. "I know," she answers. "We all are."

* * *

 

The third day there, Viktor finally gets sick enough of the heavy body smell of his traveling clothes to decide to march back out to the cave and get his pack and his things. 

He lays on the bed and looks up at the ceiling, at the cut stone texture of it. There's paint that's worn and flaked away, showing what would have once been an intense, geometric design. Something that would have shifted and twisted in lamplight. 

The third day there, Viktor gets up from the bed and shrugs into his traveling clothes one last time, and opens the door as Yuuri stands there, fist raised to knock on it. 

He has a tray in his hand, for breakfast. A blush across his face. 

Viktor looks at him. Smiles, reflexively. 

"My Lord Duke Yuuri," he says. "How are you, this day?"

Yuuri looks away, eyes settling on the floor. "I brought you breakfast," he says. "I was just heading to the fields."

Viktor takes the tray from Yuuri, but stays in the doorway. "I wanted to ask-- could you escort me to the cave? I need to fetch my gear; I couldn't bring it when we settled in the other night and I'm beginning to miss clean clothes. Or cleaner clothes, at least."

Yuuri looks at him, his brown eyes wide. "Did you forget the way?" He asks. "It's not complicated. Or we could send Nishigori, if you're worried about being seen and getting pulled into a skirmish. Let me--"

"No, Yuuri," Viktor interrupts. "I'd just like--" I'd like to spend more time with you. "I'd just like company, if you'd like to give it."

"Oh," Yuuri says. "I-- I should let Yuuko know, but that should be fine."

Viktor feels his heart speed, just a little. "Fantastic! Thank you," he says. "I'll eat breakfast and meet you down by the lake?"

Yuuri nods, and slips away down the hallway. 

Chris looks out the window as he buttons his shirt. "You are shameless Vitya," he says. "It is a good thing Yakov isn't here; you'd find a way to drive him to his grave all over again."

"Fuck off," Viktor comments, taking a huge bite of rice.

"You should just be forthcoming," he says. "He's a duke, Viktor; chances are he drunkenly dances with dashing knight operators all the time. Tell him you want to make good on your promises to plow him like a field and then do it and we won't have to suffer a full summer of you both dancing around the subject. I've already talked to the crew and they agree with me."

"I'm going to cut your pay to a pittance," Viktor says. "Have all of you on starvation wages. You'll beg me for gruel."

"I'm sure you will," Chris says, turning around. He grabs the cup of tea from the tray and drinks it all in one mouthful. "In the meantime, I'm going to talk to Nishigori about what their guard training looks like."

He leaves the room. 

Viktor eats the bowl of rice with an egg and something pickled, and then he tears out of the room and down the corridor and down the steps and through the outer wing of the palace and back down the path that leads to the docks along the lake. 

Viktor stands there in the bright, clear, early morning light. It's not quite warm yet, but there's a buzzing energy on the air that predicts clearly the immanence of a hot summer. 

"Viktor!" A voice calls. 

It's Phichit, with a basket thrown over his shoulder. He steps down the path to the dock quickly. "Yuuri said you were going to the cave to finally get your gear?"

Viktor nods. "Did he say when he'd be joining me?"

Phichit's black eyebrows dart into his hairline. He grins. "He's not," he says. "I mentioned wanting to grab mushrooms and Yuuri volunteered me. I know these woods pretty well-- I spent a few years here."

Viktor takes a deep breath. "I see," he says. 

"Not what you were hoping to hear, eh Knight-operator?"  Phichit comments. 

Viktor looks at Phichit, who looks smug and comfortable here. 

"No?" Viktor answers.

Phichit laughs. "He's really devoted to the idea of helping with the planting," he says. "Really devoted."

Viktor sighs. "Well, shit," he murmurs. "Can you show me the way to the cave anyway? I still need to get my gear."

Phichit nods. "Yeah, let's go," he answers. 

They set out, the trail crushing under their feet, the world waking up into the morning. 

"So it's Yuuri that you met back after we helped those wheat farmers last year?" Phichit asks. 

Viktor feels like such a fool. He nods. 

Phichit laughs, airly. "You've been mooning over him for what, a year? And now you get to spend all summer with him," he says. "He's great, isn't he?"

Viktor stops for Phichit to step a bit off the path, peel back the bark of a tree and stash it in his pack. He studies a few of the leaves on the tree before he leads on. 

"Of course, if you make him unhappy, I will kill you. So will Mari. And Yuuko."

"How long were you here?" Viktor asks. 

"Three years," he answers. Viktor ducks low under a heavy and gnarled branch. "Yuuri's probably my best friend."

The sound of the waterfall grows closer by measures. 

"He's so different here than he was at the tavern," Viktor says. "I think maybe he regrets it. Has he said anything about it to you?"

Phichit shrugs. There's a thatch of mushrooms growing from a felled log. He takes a few. "No," he says. "But that doesn't surprise me. Yuuri keeps his thoughts close to his chest. He's never told me anything I didn't drag out of him first." 

He turns back, to look at Viktor, all serious, dark eyes. "Yuuri takes things very seriously," he says. "He has to. He has a lot of responsibility."

"I know he's not a toy," Viktor answers. 

Phichit's mouth lies in a flat line for just a moment. 

He turns back to the path, and they walk on. 

Viktor's gear is untouched in the cave, just as he left it. He grabs his pack and steps back out of the cave, joining back to the path. 

"Do you think you can make it back on your own?" Phichit asks, cuffing his pants at the edge of the water. "There's some more stuff here I'd like to examine."

Viktor nods. "Yeah, no problem," he says. He steps down the rocky path from the waterfall back to the trail. He looks at Phichit, who is bending down to the water, studying it intently.

"I'm not going to hurt him," Viktor says. 

Phichit doesn't look up. "I don't think you intend to," he answers. "But I think not meaning to and actually doing it are different."

* * *

 

Viktor falls quickly into a routine here. 

He wakes up every morning, shortly after the sun comes up and everyone else does, too. He jaunts down to the palace kitchens where breakfast always waits on him and where tea is always fresh and hot. He eats and drinks and he lingers, hoping against hope that he'll catch a glimpse of Yuuri. He read over maps of the area, and begins sketching out routes out of the palace and into the forest, both covert and overt. He trains with Chris and the handful of people from Hasetsu that find themselves martially minded, although mostly Viktor hangs around the courtyard and hopes against hope that Yuuri might see him, looking quite brave and heroic with his shirt off and his muscles gleaming with sweat. He brings Yuuri lunch, from the kitchen, and Yuuri always blushes and stammers about not being deserving of such a thing. He bathes in the lake four times a week, the luxury of cool, clean water unspeakably wonderful. He hopes Yuuri stumbles on him bathing and feels the same way Viktor did when he found Yuuri himself bathing. Viktor brushes his long silvery hair and he keeps up maintenance on Nadya and the other knights and he eats dinner and he hopes, he hopes, he hopes that at any given time, Yuuri sees him and thinks he's beautiful. That he's worth wanting. 

Viktor quickly falls into a routine, one that is built around the beating of Viktor's lovestruck heart and the overwhelming desire for Yuuri to see him and want him. 

The second week closes the same as the first one, even as the days grow longer and warmer. The sun goes down, slowly, and Viktor lays on the bed and looks at the ceiling, listening to the rasp of crickets outside. Viktor lays there, in the dark, listening and letting the memory of the day unspool in front of him, slowly.

Viktor lays in bed when there's suddenly the sound of gunfire, off in the distance. 

Viktor sits up on the futon and checks the room immediately for lit lamps. He scrambles up and pulls the shade aside, looking out the window and over the lake.

Viktor squints. He listens. 

It's distant. Miles and miles away. It rumbles, heavy and low across the air. 

Below, Viktor sees a lantern suddenly extinguished. There's a hush. 

There's more sound. A strike of lightning. Viktor feels nausea rumble low in his stomach. Viktor knows about the knights the Empire is sending out; he didn't think they'd see them here, so far from the front or from occupied cities. 

Viktor throws on a pair of pants and tears downstairs, to go outside, to listen from the courtyard and count strikes.

Otabek is outside already, looking resolutely through a spyglass. 

"Six miles," he says. "Conflict line is more than thirty away."

"I saw lightning once," he says. Once is a fluke.

"I've been watching," he says. "If it's dusty that way out, could have just been static."

Viktor bites his lip. "Let me see that thing," he says. 

Otabek passes him the glass. 

Viktor blinks into the thing a couple times, tries to look through the dark, through the night, into any kind of knowledge. 

"This place isn't defensible," Otabek says. 

"I'm aware of that," Viktor mutters back. 

"If we have to go in, it's better we're prepared," Otabek says. 

"Wake everyone up," Viktor says. "But don't prep to go live yet. I'm still not seeing anything." The forest is low enough that their approach would be visible.

Does Viktor smell smoke, or does he imagine it?

"We're not sleeping tonight," Viktor murmurs. 

"What is it?" Yuuri asks, suddenly, beside him. 

"Skirmishing, in the distance," Viktor answers. "We don't know who, though. We're far enough from the front that it wouldn't be an issue. What's out that way?"

"Uh," Yuuri says, thinking. "Woods. The road is ten miles out from where that is."

"I'm waking up the cadre, but we're not going to prep any of our knights until we're more sure that what's out there is something we need to worry about," he says. 

Yuuri doesn't say anything, but he does stay there, standing. 

"I should have known this," he says, his voice soft. 

"You couldn't have known," Viktor says. 

"I  _ should _ have," Yuuri says, his voice a little firmer. "It's my responsibility."

"Any new lightning?" Chris asks, buttoning his shirt, approaching from behind. Viktor hands Otabek back his spyglass. Otabek retrains It into the distance. 

Viktor shakes his head. "Otabek thinks it was static; I'm inclined to believe him."

"Once is a fluke," Chris murmurs. 

Otabek nods. 

Yuuri's chest is bare. He's wearing pants but nothing else-- not even shoes. He looks pale-- wan and waxen under the moonlight. Viktor studies him for a moment, the way his eyes are fixed forward toward the horizon, the draw of his brows. His round glasses are absent, and his brown eyes look strange, focusing without them. There’s something sudden and disturbed to how he looks, as opposed to JJ and Chris and Otabek. The professionals, all of them, well used to this sort of thing. 

In the distance, there is not more lightning, but there is the cracking and crackling of missile fire. Dull booms as suddenly and hideously punctuated as the snap and clamor of breaking tree limbs, of armored hands hitting armored limbs. 

"Viktor," Chris says. "Go get dressed."

Viktor nods. He can't get into Nadya like this; he'd get scraped to bits.

"Yuuri," Mari says, buttoning a shirt and coming from the palace just as Viktor moves to head in. "You should be with Ma."

"I have to know," Yuuri says. 

"You have to be protected!" Mari says, her voice firm and loud. "What happens if you get hurt?"

Viktor pauses, just a moment, beside the bank of steps that lead up into the palace. Listening.

"Mari," Yuuri starts. 

"Go with Viktor," Chris says. "Viktor, get him to the guards and then come back."

"I can make my own decisions!" Yuuri cries, voice ringing on the air.

Viktor stands there, a moment, before he turns and goes back into the palace, to get dressed, in case the skirmishing isn't just skirmishing. 

He goes to get dressed, and to let Yuuri make his own decision.


	4. germination

Yuuri wakes up, early in the morning, to go down to the kitchens where his mother has already been awake for hours, steaming baskets of eggs and preparing wide pots full of rice. He inhales a bowl of rice and a few eggs and then he heads down to the fields. 

Yuuri does lots of thing during the day, most of them same as they ever were. He tends to the fields, winnowing out weeds among the ever taller stalks of rice. He helps his mother cook, he washes laundry, he forages in the forest, he runs after the dozen or so chickens they keep. He dances and dances and dances and dances, never by himself again. 

Yuuri does lots of things during the day, but the presence of the knights here adds a strange new wrinkle to everything. There's always the chance that Yuuri runs into Viktor in the kitchen, his hair still a mess, his blue eyes still heavy with sleep. Or sometimes, Yuuri will look to his left in the field and Otabek will be there beside him, planting his own seedlings with a gravity in his expression that Yuuri's not sure what to do with. Or that he will have to dissuade JJ from coming foraging with him-- the man is so loud. Or that while sitting in the courtyard for dinner, Chris will sit too close beside him and tease him. It's strange, how almost instantly the knights are as integrated into his life, pulled in close to him. It's strange how quickly they've been pulled into the fabric of his people.

This morning is no different. Yuuri wakes up early and follows his feet to the kitchen, for breakfast.

"Good morning, Yuuri," his mother says to him, looking over a broad pot full of broth. 

"Good morning, Mama," Yuuri answers. "Smells good."

She nods. "Sara slaughtered chickens this morning. Feet for the broth."

Yuuri nods. He grabs a bowl of rice and cracks an egg over top of it. He stirs it vigorously before drizzling sesame oil over the top and some soy sauce. He practically inhales it, before he grabs a bowl of tea. 

"Thank you, Mama," Yuuri says, before he rushes out of the kitchen and outside, to the fields and into the day.

* * *

Yuuri sits in the sun, beside the courtyard, mending clothes when--

There's laughter, a lot of it. It's loud and bright, coming before JJ and Chris and Phichit come running from the lake. Otabek comes from the back and tackles Phichit, before Minami and Nishigori come from the flank and take Chris. More laughter, more running, and then Viktor--

Yuuri feels his mouth go dry. Viktor's long, long hair is pulled up on top of his head. His shirt is off and his skin is turning flushed pink from being in the sun. He's beautiful. He's so beautiful, so overwhelmingly beautiful. His chest, his arms, his hips. 

Yuuri startles. He looks down, to where a bead of blood wells up at the tip of his finger. He's pricked himself with the needle. 

"Ho there!" Mari calls. Yuuri startles again. So much is happening all at once. "What the hell is going on?"

"Mari, sister, are you trying to kill me," Yuuri murmurs. 

Viktor smiles, from across the courtyard. "Just some practice fighting!" He answers. "We have to keep everyone sharp."

Nishigori grins. "Remember rabbit hunting back in Hasetsu?" He says. "Just like that."

"What about combat?" Mari asks. "Do you spar?"

JJ scoffs. "Of course we spar," he says. 

"With the same people, every day?" Mari asks. 

"Who else would we spar with?" Otabek asks.

Mari rolls her shoulders. Cracks her neck. 

She steps into the beaten dirt of the courtyard. 

"Oh hell," Nishigori says, looking away. "Mari is about to hand you your own ass."

JJ steps forward, stretching his arms over his head. He grins, looking foolish and coltish.

Yuuri places the needle back in the cork. He remembers Mari rolling Nishigori off her back and into the dirt a few years ago, both of them laughing, both of them bruised.

This is different. 

Mari raises her fists in front of herself, pulling her body low, waiting. Her expression is sharp and intense. JJ raises his own hands, his body looser, his shoulders rocking from side to side. 

Mari shoots out a quick one-two, her hands flying through the air. JJ dodges, still smiling, neglecting to notice how Mari's leg sweeps out and takes his feet from under him. JJ hits the dirt with a heavy, breathy  _ oomf! _ Mari laughs. 

Nishigori's laughter is deep and hearty, as Mari takes JJ's arm behind him, twisting him with his wrist in one hand, his bent elbow in the other. 

JJ taps the earth with his free hand, groaning.  Mari lets him free. He laughs. "Again?" He asks. "Please? I'd like to get at least one hit in."

Mari nods. Falls back into position. JJ does too. 

They observe each other for a moment, assessing. 

"That was a solid kick," he says. "Did you train west? Toward Montraive?"

Mari shrugs. "I've never been that way, but people I've trained with have," she answer. "Come here."

JJ sets a punch forward, his left hand darting forward, before his right dives under, to catch Mari in the stomach. She rolls through it though, stepping back to pull him forward. They circle each other, backward and forward. Mari's hands a quick one-two, back and forth. JJ blocks the left, before the right takes him in the shoulder. 

Mari's expression is serious, clear. JJ's has shifted from playful to similarly grave. 

Yuuri's seen Mari fight like this before, lots of times. Yuuri's fought Mari like this before, personally. She doesn't draw out a fight. She works quickly, efficiently. She snaps through, suddenly, to tag JJ with a quick punch, direct, to the nose. He shakes his head, exhaling sharply. 

"She broke my nose once," Nishigori says, on the other side of the courtyard.

"Is that what happened to your face?" Otabek asks, his voice quiet and dry. 

Nishigori shakes his head. "Nah, that was Yuuko."

JJ reaches, to take Mari by the edges of her shirt. 

Mari blocks the hold with the edges of her forearms, batting him away.

She takes him by his wrists. Yuuri flinches; Mari's hands are strong and her grip is tight.  

She twists JJ, rolling him down onto the ground; hard. She settles her foot into the center of his chest, leaning in low.

"You got a hit in," she says. 

Viktor grins from across the courtyard. "Impressive," he comments. "May I?"

Mari shakes her head. "You've seen how I work," she says. "What good would I do you?" 

"Another time?" he asks. 

"There's always Yuuri," Phichit comments.

Viktor's eyebrows raise. 

Mari helps JJ up. "He got extensive training," she comments. "And I'm sure Minako taught him stuff she's never shown anyone else."

"Mari," Yuuri sighs. "I don't know; these are professional--"

"Please," Viktor says, stepping forward. "Please-- I'd...please."

Yuuri looks at Viktor. He looks at Mari, grinning. He looks at the sewing in his hands.

Yuuri puts it down and gets up from where he's been sitting. He rolls his neck and shakes his arms, his shoulders. 

"Be gentle," he says. "I'm not warm, yet."

Mari barks a quick laugh. She clears away from the space. 

Viktor steps forward. He's smiling. 

God help Yuuri, he's so beautiful, he stops Yuuri's heart. 

He pulls his left foot behind himself, setting his weight harder on his right. He raises his fists, the right forward, closer. 

Yuuri looks at him, studies him for a moment.

Yuuri looks at him, and then it starts. 

* * *

Yuuri has a look in his eye that Viktor's never seen on him before. Something serious and sharp. 

Viktor looks at him, across from him, until Yuuri bursts forward.

Viktor blocks one punch, two, and he jumps back from a kick attempting to sweep his leg.

"Just like Mari, mm?" Viktor asks.

Yuuri shrugs. 

Viktor punches. Yuuri blocks. 

Viktor feels the dust under his bare feet. The sun on his skin. 

Yuuri's foot sweeps under him again. Viktor darts forward. 

Yuuri dodges. He steps forward, pushing Viktor back. 

Yuuri moves like the water. He moves like a tide. 

Viktor feels himself being drawn too far back; toyed with. He can't help it. He has to follow.

Yuuri's fist darts out. Viktor rears back, and Yuuri's second fist follow sharp and hard, catching Viktor's shoulder.

Viktor tries a few punches of his own. He hits air, Yuuri all quick grace. 

Viktor doesn't see Yuuri's foot rise into the air, he just feels it catch on his ribs. Viktor doesn't see Yuuri dart behind him, he just feels his hands on his arm and shoulder, pulling him down.

Viktor rolls out and away from the pin. 

Yuuri grabs his hair. Pulls.

Viktor twists and scrambles in the dirt, kicking his leg out, sweeping Yuuri down. 

Yuuri lets go of his hair, popping back up. Viktor does, too.

"Round one!" Chris calls from the other end of the courtyard.

Yuuri hunkers back low for a moment, his eyes flashing, before he races forward.

"That's the boar!" Phichit calls from the otherside.

Yuuri punches, fast enough that Viktor can barely dodge, his hands coming one after the other. Viktor backs up trying to put distance between them, when Yuuri pivots to his side and kicks Viktor, landing solidly on his shoulders, his chest. One, two, three. 

Yuuri pulls back, into form. He watches Viktor. 

He's waiting. 

He's toying with him. 

Viktor darts low, trying to change their positions. Yuuri blocks him. He bounces up, light on the balls of his feet. 

Viktor kicks, keeping distance. Yuuri dodges, flexing like a reed. 

"Slippery," Viktor comments. 

Yuuri nods. 

"Can't hit what you can't catch, pretty boy," Mari calls. 

Yuuri smirks. 

"It was dirty to pull my hair like that," Viktor says.

"No honor in battle," Yuuri says, automatically. 

Viktor grins. 

He snaps a punch forward. Yuuri trades one back. 

The air crackles between them. 

Viktor's standing, and then he's on the ground. Yuuri has his leg tucked under his arm, twisting Viktor down by his hips, into the dirt. Viktor's not sure how he got here.

"Round two!" Chris calls. Yuuri lets him go and stands up. 

"Yuuri!" Someone calls. He turns, and Viktor sees from the edge of the courtyard Minami toss him two staves. 

Yuuri tosses one to Viktor, who rolls it in his hand for a moment. He handles it experimentally for a moment.

Yuuri sets into position. Viktor does too. 

"I'm rusty," Yuuri says, quirking his head to the side. 

"I won't make the mistake of being too gentle with you twice, Yuuri," Viktor comments.

Viktor's heard the snap and slap of knight armor hitting knight armor; of branches shattering under the weight of mechanical bodies being thrown. 

It's familiar, how the staves crack together. 

_ One two three four. _

Yuuri pulls back into rest, his staff pulled to his side. Hilted. 

Viktor's panting. Yuuri is as calm as the surface of the lake. 

_ One, two. _ Viktor pulls forward, trying to get a hit in. Yuuri parries.  _ Three. _ The staff sweeps to Viktor's side, pausing there before it hits.  _ Four _ . Viktor sweeps Yuuri's legs; Yuuri leaps above it. 

_ One. _ Yuuri tags Viktor's side, hitting him this time.  _ Two _ . Yuuri's staff on his shoulder.  _ Three. _ A kick.  _ Four. _ Viktor hits the dirt. 

"And that's round three," Chris says. 

Yuuri tosses the staff away, leans over to help Viktor up. His grip is sure and steady around Viktor's hand as he pulls him up. 

"Have you ever taken knighthood?" Viktor asks. "That was incredible."

Yuuri shakes his head. "Oracles don't take armor," he says. "And neither do heirs."

"Can we do that again or--"

Yuuri shakes his head. He turns around, grabs the mending he was working on, and walks away. 

Viktor watches him go. 

"Shit," Phichit says. He breaks away from the men and walks after him. 

Viktor turns back around. Looks at Nishigori and Mari, who both have an exhausted, sad kind of expression. Viktor walks back to the men. JJ is already tenderly touching his jaw and nose, feeling for the rapidly swelling bruises. 

"Oracles don't take armor?" Viktor asks.

Mari nods. "That's what Minako says," she answers. "They got into it once. It was-- it's complicated."

Viktor looks back, to the space where Yuuri stood. 

"He moves like an artist," he says.

"He's a dancer," Mari replies. "Of course he does."

* * *

* * *

Yuuri walks away, because he's suddenly so--

"Yuuri," Phichit calls. "Yuuri, wait--"

He keeps walking. He walks until he manages to duck into a hallway that's completely empty. Cool from the memory in the stone and the morning, he leans against it and desperately tries to catch his breath from around the panic pressing against him.

Yuuri doesn't even hear Phichit's footsteps on the cool stone floor. He can't hear him talking to him, he just sees him, and the movement of his mouth, trying to say something to Yuuri. 

Yuuri shakes his head. He closes his eyes. He feels the cool, grounding stone. 

There's a long time, in that silent, cold place where the panic chases him. It stretches in front of him. Yuuri keeps trying to breathe; he keeps trying. It gets a little easier, though, and a little easier and a little easier. By the moment, the panic before him shrinks and shrinks and shrinks, until he can hear Phichit's voice again, until he can open his eyes again.

Yuuri turns to the side and throws up on the cold flagstones. Wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. 

"Yuuri, are you okay?" Phichit asks.

Yuuri shrugs. 

"They didn't know," he says. "They couldn't have known. They didn't."

Yuuri nods. "I know," he says. "Sorry. God, they must think I'm so rude."

Phichit huffs a laugh. He rolls his bright, dark eyes. "They mostly thought you should lead their sparring practice," Phichit says. "I haven't seen anyone kick Viktor's ass like that."

"Really?" Yuuri asks. "Maybe we should pay them less."

Phichit laughs. "Come on, let me give you something to help calm you down and then I'll clean up this mess."

Yuuri looks down at the floor. "Oh-- shit, no," Yuuri says. "I'm fine. I can grab a bucket from the kitchen and take care of it."

Phichit shakes his head. "Yuuri--"

"I'm not delicate," Yuuri says.

Phichit looks at him for a long moment. They know each other-- they've known each other for a long time. Celestino came here with Phichit a few years back, to act as their healer, right when the triplets were born and Yuuko was still recovering. They stayed through the flu that swept through them, and then they stayed through another winter. Yuuri thinks maybe Phichit knows him better than anyone else. Phichit knows him well enough to know the fear that stalks him. This thing he can’t want.

"They didn't know it was a sore spot," Phichit says, as if reading his mind.

Yuuri nods. "I know," he says. "I just--" He swallows around the taste of vomit in his mouth. "I need a moment, by myself."

Phichit looks at him, his eyes wide and understanding. "Okay," he says. "I'm gonna go prep a poultice for Viktor. Take care of yourself."

"I'll see you," Yuuri says. He jogs briskly to the kitchen-- mercifully unoccupied-- and stashes the mending on a table and grabs a bucket and a rag. He heads back to where he threw up and mops it up and when he turns around, Viktor's there.

"I found you," Viktor says. "Are you okay?"

Yuuri looks at him. He's pink already from sunburn, the color hitting his cheeks and throat and parts of his chest. His eyes (his blue, blue eyes) look concerned and clear. 

"I'm fine," Yuuri manages. 

"Oh," Viktor says. He nods. "Good. You ran off and I got worried."

Yuuri shrugs. "I'm fine," he repeats. 

Viktor looks at him. He's close to him. Close enough that Yuuri swears he can feel the heat radiating off of his skin. 

"You should train with us more often," Viktor says. "You're only as good as your training and I've never seen anyone fight like you before."

Yuuri bows his head, reflexively. "You're too nice, " he answers. "I'm nothing special."

"I'm being honest," Viktor says. "Please. We'd love to learn from you. I can really only spar against Chris so many times before I've learned all his dirty tricks. I'd-- I'd love to learn new ones." Yuuri watches the slow drag of Viktor's bottom lip from between his teeth, full and beautiful. "I've never seen anyone move like you, Yuuri. I don’t think anyone’s ever pulled my  _ hair _ ."

"I can't teach you oracular practice," Yuuri blurts. "I couldn't and-- and you couldn't learn. You're too old."

Viktor's expression shifts, going from confused to playful. "You wound me," he laughs. "An old man, already, at twenty-seven."

"No-- no, that's not what I meant," Yuuri stutters, feeling himself blush. "No, I meant--"

"I should go to bed," Viktor says. "I should rest my aged head. I am so delicate."

"You have to train your whole life," Yuuri says. "You're not old, you're young! I promise, you're young!"

Viktor hangs his head low for a moment before he looks up at Yuuri, grinning from behind the fringe of his bangs. 

"Oh, thank you, Yuuri," he says. "You must forgive me, I am so vain."

_ You deserve to be _ , Yuuri thinks,  _ you're so beautiful. _

"Please, Yuuri," Viktor says. "When my bruises heal, you could spar with me again?"

Yuuri smiles, despite himself. "Maybe," he says. 

Vitkor smiles back. "Maybe," he says back. 

Yuuri reaches forward, on impulse, and flicks Viktor. 

"Ah!" Viktor shouts, flinching. 


	5. sprouts

Viktor can't sleep. 

The solstice is fast approaching. The days have grown longer and longer and longer, the sun rising earlier and earlier and setting later and later. There are no clocks in the palace, and the one in Nadezhda is--

Well, it's been years since Viktor spent so much time outside Nadezhda.

His first sunburn has healed over, and now he is tanned and freckled within an inch of his life. He's been training and sparring with his company and Nishigori and Mari. He's been fishing in the lake and climbing trees and he's been waiting and waiting. 

He's been waiting for there to be a reason for them to be here, but he's also been waiting for that tenuous thing between him and Yuuri to finally blossom. 

Viktor's waiting, waiting, waiting and it's killing him. 

It's summer, and the days are so hot and long and Viktor can't sleep. 

"Go to sleep, Viktor," Chris sighs from the other side of the room. 

Viktor turns over on the bed. The air feels so still. 

"I'm too hot," he grumbles, and he gets up from the floor.

"Where are you going?" Chris asks.

"Out," Viktor answers. He grabs his bedroll, still rolled tight from when they arrived all those weeks ago, and walks through the warm halls and outside and down the docks and to the side of the lake and he sits down and he just breathes.

The crickets are loud in the summer night. The air is thick and humid and hot, but it's cooler out here. The stone walls of the palace were barely cooler than body temperature, and the way it crowded around him, it was suffocating him. 

The water in the darkness is inky and shiny and black. Across its surface it reflects back the stars that shine above. 

Viktor leans back onto his palms and looks up at the sky, at all the stars hanging high. 

"Oh," Viktor hears, and he turns around, and Yuuri is there, just visible in the semi-darkness. 

"Yuuri," Viktor says, smiling. "I was just trying to cool off."

"You shouldn't swim alone at night," Yuuri says, automatically, quickly. "What if you got hurt?" He sits down on the deck, just near enough to Viktor that he can just barely make out his features. The vague curve of his cheekbones, the obscured shape of where his neck joins his jaw. For the first time today, Viktor wishes that the sun were out, just so he could see. 

"I wasn't swimming," Viktor says. "I was stargazing."

Yuuri takes a deep breath. Viktor can hear it. 

Usually, it's easier than this. Usually, Viktor makes eyes at whichever handsome youth he's vaguely interested in having sex with and then they have sex and the infatuation passes and they leave at the end of it all. Usually, Viktor isn't crowing into their space at every opportunity. Usually, Viktor doesn't spend most of the day with his shirt off in the foolish hope that they might be interested in his body. Usually, Viktor hasn't already shared a night of drunken dancing and promises with them. 

It's a strange, foolish kind of feeling. Maybe with a different person, Viktor would ask right now if he could kiss them. Maybe with a different person, Viktor already would have. But this is Yuuri. 

"I'm sorry it's been so boring," Yuuri says. "I know it must be exciting to be a knight operator. You must be getting sick of this."

"No," Viktor says. "Not at all. It's been...there's a part of it that's very nice." He looks back up at the stars. "I miss being useful, but I don't miss waiting for us to get hurt. And I don't miss being on starvation rations just to get us to the next job. And I don't miss the mud."

"The mud?" Yuuri asks.

Viktor nods. "Nothing grows on a battlefield. It gets trampled out too fast, and then it's all just mud," he answers. "It's a bitch to get off of Nadya."

Viktor sees Yuuri curl his knees up to his chest, his silhouette going round and solid beside him. 

The crickets sing into the night. 

"If you're here," Viktor asks, "and I'm not alone, can I take a dip?"

"In the lake?" Yuuri asks. 

Viktor huffs a sudden laugh. "Where else?" He replies.

There's a pause. "I guess so," he says. "I can watch you."

Viktor swallows, his throat dry. "Or you could join me," he says.

There's a long, long pause, before Yuuri says, "Turn around and don't look at me."

Viktor turns around and away. He pulls his trousers down and folds them to place beside his bedroll. 

"Okay," Yuuri says after a moment. "I'm getting in."

Viktor nods. Realizes Yuuri can't see him. "Sure," he says. 

There's a splashing of water sounds, before Yuuri says, "Okay."

Viktor slides into the water, which is cool and cold against him. He ducks underneath and wets his hair. It's just deep enough that it's comfortable to float; shallow enough that he can stand on the bottom and the way comes midway up his chest.

In the light reflected off the water, Yuuri glows. His hair is pushed away from his face, and Viktor can see his every feature. 

Viktor sighs. He moves to float on his back, to look up at the sky. 

"I'm so glad I wasn't the only one up," Yuuri says. "It's so much better in the water."

"You're very serious about swimming alone," Viktor comments.  "I thought you bathed alone."

"During the day," Yuuri says. "Night is different. Night is--" There's a long pause, heavy on the air. "Sometimes, when I'm dancing, I can feel it happening. The drowning."

Viktor sits up, in the water, to look at Yuuri. 

"It's going to happen," Yuuri says. "I know it's going to. I just don't know-- I don't know when and I don't know to who. I just know."

Viktor swims forward, near to Yuuri. To see him, as clearly as he can. Yuuri's face is turned away, down toward his shoulders. "Yuuri," Viktor says. 

"I know," Yuuri says. "So we don't swim by ourselves, at night, when it's riskiest."

"I'll tell the company," Viktor says, gravely. 

Yuuri takes a deep breath. "Thank you," he says. 

There's just the sound of the water between them for a moment. Cool and light, like the sound of bells. 

"Is it always so warm here, in the summers?" He asks.

"Fuck. Yes," Yuuri answers. "I remember when we first got here, from out of the mountains. It was awful. There's hardly a winter here at all. "

Viktor laughs. "Poor Yuuri," he murmurs. 

"In the mountains, there was snow," Yuuri says, sighing. "I miss the snow."

"And you've been here...ten years? Fifteen?" He asks.

"Seven," Yuuri answers. "We weren't sure it would be safe for a long time. It was a last resort. We didn't have anywhere else to go."

Yuuri drifts across the water to rest his arms up on the dock. Viktor can see in the moonlight reflected off of the water the muscles heavy and strong in Yuuri's back.

"What about you?" he asks. "How long have you-- how long have you been a soldier?"

Viktor runs his fingers through his hair. It tangles in the water, pulling against his scalp. "All my life. Yakov found me in Sanktpet. In what was left of it, I guess," he answers. "I grew up going between companies with him, job to job. It's why I know Nadya so well."

Yuuri pulls himself up out of the water, onto the dock. Viktor watches the flex and pull of his arms. Of his body. He lays out on the dock, the shape of his body silvery and glistening in the moonlight. Viktor looks at him, at how beautiful he is. 

Yuuri turns over on the dock, onto his belly. He looks out over the water, at Viktor. 

"When did you put on the armor?" Yuuri asks. 

Viktor licks his lip. "I was fifteen," he says. "Yakov, he had an infection in his lungs, and the shepherds we were contracted with, in the steppes, they lost a lamb and a shepherd. No enemies, so I just slid into the armor and helped the search party. We found both of them; the shepherd had broken his leg and the lamb refused to leave him."

"Did I tell you about when we fled Hasetsu?" Yuuri asks. 

_ Once _ , Viktor thinks.  _ Before I knew you _ . 

"Tell me," he answers, instead. He swims forward, near to the dock. 

"I was seven when it happened," Yuuri says. "I remember-- I remember I was in the snow, with Mari and Mama. My father, he wasn't there. We were running. Mama told me we had to keep running, but it was so cold and I was so scared and I kept falling down. And there was a huge noise, behind us and I turned around and there was an imperial behind us. And we were running and then-- and then Nadya was there. She was so big and graceful and strong." 

Yuuri looks at Viktor, through the dark. He can feel his eyes on him, his gaze, even if the details of him get lost in the inky, rich darkness. Yuuri looks at Viktor, through the dark, and Viktor wonders what he sees. 

"I thought maybe it was you that I remembered," Yuuri says. "You seem so familiar. But I guess not. I guess-- " His voice pauses. Cracks. 

Viktor wonders if Yuuri can see the disappointment, that he doesn't remember the dancing between them. 

"It was silly," Yuuri says. 

"It wasn't," Viktor spits out, automatically. "Yakov was an incredible operator. He taught me everything I know."

"What...what happened to him?" Yuuri asks. 

"He died in armor,” Viktor answers. “Some years ago."

“Oh, shit,” Yuuri murmurs. “I’m sorry.”

Viktor reaches out, onto the top of the dock, and he tangles his fingers into Yuuri's hand. 

Yuuri lets him. It feels delicate, precious. 

“Don’t be,” Viktor says. “Everyone dies. I forgave him dying a long time ago.”

"I've never hung around knights like all of you,” Yuuri says. “I didn’t realize-- it seems so dangerous."

"It is," Viktor answers. 

_ These are dangerous times we live in, Vitya, no time for children and no time for princes.  _

The memory comes to him suddenly, unbidden. Yakov, holding him as he cries. 

“You told me that soldiers don’t retire,” Yuuri says, quietly. Slowly. “That they die in battle.”

Viktor nods. He wonders if Yuuri can see it in the dark. “Chris also told you I’m a ditz, Yuuri,” he says, trying to diffuse this tense, strange thing between them. Not knowing if he actually wants to. Not knowing if he  _ can _ .

“You’re not a ditz,” Yuuri murmurs. “You’re wonderful. You and Nadya both.”

Viktor thinks maybe his heart rushes, just a little, at the honest, reverent tone of Yuuri’s voice. 

He remembers sparring with Yuuri. He remembers him leaving, suddenly. 

"I could help you pilot her, if you'd like," Viktor says. "Just for a little bit. Not even a patrol. Just a little tour."

_ No time for princes. _

Yuuri grips his hand harder, tight enough that Viktor can feel the bones in his knuckles grind together. 

"I'd like that," Yuuri says, his voice so soft Viktor can barely hear him. 

Viktor nods. 

He can hear wind stir the trees, the sound of leaves falling to hit the water. 

Suddenly, the night air breaks and rain falls, hard, slapping against the water of the lake. 

* * *

* * *

Minako lights incense and kneels on the floor, the long, solid drumstick held firmly in her hand. She has her hair pulled up and away from her face. She's turned away from Yuuri, just slightly. This performance isn't for her. It isn't for anyone to see. 

Dancing the rite like this, it doesn't scare Yuuri more than dancing for court. 

_ It should _ , Minako had told him, once.

She strikes her drum. Its tone is high and clear on the air. 

Yuuri draws the top of his foot along the floor. The opening steps. 

Minako begins to strike rhythm, and the heartbeat of it fills Yuuri's limbs. He raises both of his arms into the air, letting his wrists fall forward, his fingers fanning. He's not wearing the costume for this, like he would at court. He just in his trousers, his chest bare to the air. No paint, no makeup. His hairs stand up on end suddenly, in a blooming wave across his skin. 

Yuuri brings his arms and hands down and forward, lunging. He dives through space, letting the heartbeat take him. 

It doesn't feel the way it's ever felt before. It's never felt like laughter, or like the cold press of fresh snowflakes melting against his skin. It's tingling and effervescent. 

It sparkles. Somehow, the feeling sparkles. 

Yuuri dances, and the feeling comes like the golden spray of pollen captured on the wind. 

Yuuri dances, until the feeling leaves and the beat stops. Yuuri dances, and when he finds himself done, he's leaned back against a wall, his legs out in front of him on the floor, the wall solid against his back. 

He blinks a few times. He's dizzy. 

"Yuuri," Minako whispers, her voice as soft as the wind. "What did you feel?"

Yuuri closes his eyes, remembering. 

"I don't know," he says. 

It was so different.

Minako doesn't say anything. She doesn't move either, just sits beside him for the long, slow process of Yuuri coming back into himself. 

"Green underfoot," Yuuri says eventually. "And--and ripeness. Heavy on the vine."

Minako's expression is serious. Her eyebrows are drawn downward, her mouth set in a thin line. 

"Something's happening?" Yuuri says. "Something long awaited, coming at last."

She nods, after a moment. Yuuri closes his eyes again. He takes a long, long breath. 

His arms ache. His ankles and knees, too. 

"Take a shower," Minako says. "I'll get you something to eat."

Yuuri stumbles up from the floor, his legs loose and reeling. He catches himself against the wall, before he manages to get out of the door and into Minako's yard. 

It's hot. The sun is heavy and high, and the air is thick with humidity. Yuuri slaps a mosquito away from himself and walks barefoot across the wet grass to the small deck under the shower. 

Yuuri pulls off his clothes, hanging them on the long branch of the magnolia tree. 

The water is sun warmed and comfortable on his skin, pulling away the salt of sweat and the drowsy air. 

Yuuri closes his eyes, running his hands through his wet hair. He takes some soap and massages it in. 

"Oh!" Yuuri hears and he opens his eyes and turns around and--

There's a gap in the trees, and where Yuuri looks, there stands Viktor. He's flushed in the early afternoon sunlight. His shirt is unbuttoned low down his chest, slipping away off his shoulder, showing the shape of his body. 

Viktor is so fucking beautiful. 

Viktor looks at Yuuri. He doesn't look away, his blue eyes piercing and bright and clear. He licks his lips. 

They look at each other. Yuuri closes his eyes, pulling the cord that lets the water loose.

He pushes the soap out of his hair. He runs his fingers over his scalp. He pushes the water away from his skin, and he looks back, at Viktor. 

Viktor's mouth is slack. His features--

He looks hungry, as hungry as Yuuri feels. 

Yuuri looks at Viktor and lets his hand drift slowly, slowly down his chest, down his belly, down his hips, between his thighs. 

Yuuri wraps his hand around himself. Strokes down his cock. Runs his thumb over the head. Feels himself become hard. His left hand, he cups his jaw, draws his thumb into his mouth.

Viktor takes a step forward, trips on something, and falls down loudly. 

It sounds painful. 

* * *

Viktor is in the courtyard, focusing on the exercises Minako taught him, when it happens. 

He's focusing on a long, sustained exhalation, moving his hands down from the sides of his chest, to his hips. He focuses on the movement of his individual muscles, the flow and circulation of energy inside of himself. Viktor has his eyes relaxed and unfocused on the air. Viktor is preparing to draw a new breath in when he hears it. 

It's loud. It echoes from miles out, sweeping across the air. It's a heavy, cracking, intentional sound, the sudden shattering of trees. 

It's a lot like the sound in the night from a month or so ago.

Otabek jogs up to him, damp from work in the paddies. "It sounds close," he says. 

Viktor nods. 

JJ scrambles up from where he was laying on the steps, reading the same letter from Isabella again. "We should go get our gear on," he says. 

Viktor looks out at it. 

A trickle of people begin to flow from the paddies and to the courtyard. 

"Viktor," Minako says, holding a baby on her hip. "What's happening?"

Viktor shakes his head. "We don't know. Get everyone into the palace. Do you know where Mari is?"

Mari runs, full speed, past them, into the palace. "Get ready!" She calls, her voice trailing behind her. "Imperials!"

Viktor nods. Phichit jogs up beside him. "I'll keep an eye on distance; go get ready."

Once is a fluke.

Viktor darts up the stairs, tearing into his quarters. He rips his trouser and shirt off and pulls his operator uniform on-- the heavier material and structure an armor itself. He pulls his boots on and races back down the stairs, tying his long hair up. Mari is already downstairs, in the bay with the rest of the knights. 

"Mari," Viktor says, laying his hand on Nadya's chest plate, bringing her to life. "Stay back near the palace with JJ. Last line of defense."

"I'm not useless," she says. "I can fight."

"You're a lady," Viktor says. "Yuuri might be heir but you're still important. We're not going to put you in danger unless we have to."

"It's my duty to protect Hasetsu," she says. "My blood belongs to them."

Viktor climbs up into his cockpit, seating himself and sliding his arms into the controls and his legs to the shifts. 

"If you got hurt, what would I tell Yuuri?" Viktor says. "Or your mother, or Minako? We're salaried to protect Hasetsu. That includes you. Hang back with JJ."

Viktor feels the press of the operating harness against his shoulders as Nadya raises up, machinery groaning, whirring to life.  He feels the heavy drag of her mechanical feet underneath himself, and he steps out of the bay and back to the courtyard. 

Phichit is there with Yuuri and Minako. The townspeople are fled from the fields and the courtyard. 

There is no birdsong. It's eerie. Quiet. 

"Go with the rest of them, Yuuri," Viktor says. 

"I have to see," Yuuri says. "What if--"

"Go evacuate," Viktor shouts. "If you get hurt, Hasetsu doesn't exist anymore."

"Yuuri, go," Phichit says.

Yuuri looks at them, looks hurt, but he leaves. 

"What does it look like?" Viktor asks. 

"Two of them," Phichit says. "Northeast of us and coming closer. One brawler and one scout. Looks to be eight miles out."

Chris sidles up to Viktor in Caspar. "Otabek is coming," he says. "What's the plan?"

"Meet them flanked ahead five miles from here," Viktor says. "I'll meet them from the left; you take right. Send Otabek straight ahead; he's the heavy hitter."

"Sounds good," Chris says. "Keep them out of the fields?"

"And away from the palace. At any price."

"Shit," Chris says. 

It's faster going north than it was coming south. The way is clearer, and they're not looking to hide. They still don't see the knights from this distance; just hear them. Feel them. 

"Routine," Chris says over the comms. "This is routine. We do this all the time."

Viktor knows Chris talks to comfort himself. Viktor doesn't feel anything, though. Just the certain, heavy emptiness before going out. The knowledge that it'll be the imperials, or it'll be Viktor, and dozens of times over now, it hasn't been Viktor. 

_ Every mission is your last mission, Vitya _ , Yakov had said. 

The paddies fade into fields. The fields slip into forest. They peel off from each other. The sound gets closer.  Nearer. The crashing. The draw and pull of machinery against dense, vegetal cover. 

Viktor pulls himself beside a stand of trees. Tries to make himself hidden. 

Viktor waits. And he waits and he waits. 

It is the loudest silence in the world, waiting like this. Viktor can hear his own wordlessness, only the rasp of his own breath echoing in Nadya's shell. Viktor can hear himself hiding, and he can hear the unselfconscious movement of the brawler and the scout in a kind of amplified, nauseous cacophony. 

The brawler is large. Enormous; it's rounded from its head to its shoulders. Harder to get a grip on it this way. It has huge arms, without articulated hands. Just huge, punishing blocks. It's painted bright red, unsubtle. These things don't have to hide. 

Viktor hates imperial brawlers. The operators inside of them are bastards and killers more often than not.

He keeps watching, though, through the thin slits of his visor. 

The brawler steps forward, fists raised. Behind it steps a scout.

Imperial scouting units are smaller, thinner, faster. This one is built with avian legs that bend backward, pitching the cockpit forward onto its long, planted toes. There's the pair of extended handles on the back-- both antennas and machetes. It's painted dappled light blue and grey and white. This one is for northern missions. 

What the hell are you doing so far south, Viktor thinks. 

It's the last thought Viktor has before Aiman explodes out of the woods and knocks the brawler one-two on top of the head and into the chest, where the cockpit is. 

Viktor slips behind them, as fast as he can and takes the brawler's left arm in Nadezhda's large hands and twists and pulls as hard as he can. He feels an animal scream tear out of his chest as he does it, as hard as he can.

Caspar heads from the right; Viktor hears the crunch and scrape of metal-on-metal as her fists connect with the scout. 

"Keep your hold!" Otabek shouts through the comm. 

Viktor tries. He keeps wrenching that arm, and there's a tearing and groaning.

The brawler twists and the arm comes off in Nadya's hands. The brawler stands immediately and catches Aiman's next punch with its whole, blunted arm. It deflects Aiman away, sending her stumbling back for stability. 

Viktor clubs the brawler with its own arm. He hops back, light and fast, out of the range of its slow, heavy punches. 

"Beka, you alright?" Chris calls.

Otabek grunts.

Nadezhda darts forward, into space, and grabs the brawler's free arm as it rises to punch again. 

The scout tags Nadya from the side, small, fast hits. 

Viktor grunts, adjusting his footing. They're sharp enough that Viktor's sure he'll have bruises tomorrow morning. 

The brawler moves to pull free from Nadya's grip.  This model is heavier than Nadya-- more powerful, too.

"Could use a hand!" He calls. 

He keeps hold of the brawler's arm, straining to keep it in his grip. He hears the crisp, grinding clatter of metal hands against metal bodies. He twists the brawler's arm, trying to tear it or injure it in any way he can. 

As suddenly as Viktor grabbed the arm, the blunt end of it opens, like a flower blooming. 

"Shit," he hisses. 

He lets go, but it's too late.

Viktor sees it, before he hears it, and he barely feels anything. 

"Viktor!" Chris screams into the comm, as the lighting cannon goes off. 

* * *

* * *

It's a worse feeling than it was months ago. 

Yuuri paces in the room, back and forth, back and forth. The rest of Hasetsu is in the throne room; the room most center to the palace and thus the most defensible. Yuuri, though, is with Phichit, in a room with an eastern-facing window, listening and waiting. 

Waiting. Waiting. 

"The approach went well," Phichit says. 

Yuuri looks out the window. There's the crashing sound, echoing from the distance. 

"That's the fight," Phichit says.

"What's happening?" Yuuri asks. 

"They found each other. The imperials are outnumbered, though. Smart to take three to the fight. Cut them off at the pass and keep our numbers obscured," Phichit comments.

There's more of that loud, distant crashing, and then--

Yuuri knows what it is as soon as he hears it. He's turned away from the window so he doesn't see the flash. But he hears it and he swears, he can feel it. 

Yuuri wants to collapse. 

"What happened?" Yuuri asks. "What happened?"

Phichit doesn't say anything. Yuuri turns, looks at him, frozen and staring out. 

"Lightning cannon," Phichit says. "Tagged Nadya at point blank."

Yuuri shakes his head. "He's okay," he says. "He's okay. I know he's okay."

Phichit doesn't say anything more. Yuuri keeps looking out, hoping he'll see something. Hoping he'll know. 

"Chris has got the scout taken care of," Phichit says. "Right leg of the unit is destroyed. Ripped out the antenna, too."

Yuuri nods. 

"Something's wrong with the brawler's cannon. It's not firing again," Phichit continues. 

They stand there, together, silent for a long moment. There's another terrible, awful rumbling.

"Brawler is dead," Phichit says.

Yuuri feels something wash over him. His stomach drops, suddenly, absolutely. He feels clammy. Sick. 

"Dead?" he murmurs.

Phichit nods. "Cannon blew," he answers. "Aiman and Felix look fine."

"What about Viktor?" Yuuri asks.

"Nadya's not rising," he says. "Machinery looks fine, though. No scorching, which is always a good sign." 

"How are we going to her back here?" Yuuri asks.

"We'll send Seito and JJ out," Phichit says. "He can pilot her-- Felix is an antique, too."

"What about Viktor?" Yuuri asks.

Phichit doesn't say anything for a long time. 

Yuuri shakes his head. 

He shakes his head. 

"Scout cockpit is opening," Phichit says. "Operator has hands up. It's a surrender."

Yuuri looks at Phichit. At his strong shoulders and straight spine, his feet planted wide and strong on the floor. 

"What happens now?" Yuuri asks. It's been years since he was this close to a battle, and even longer since he was so close to one he wasn't actively fleeing. 

"It looks like you have a prisoner," Phichit says. "We should find a place to keep him."

"It's over?" Yuuri asks.

Phichit nods. He still stares out through the window, through the scope. 

Yuuri shakes, getting up from the floor and tearing down the hall, back outside. He vibrates as he makes it to where JJ and his sister stand, staring out at the stilliness ahead of them. 

"Viktor's hurt," Yuuri says. "Viktor's hurt; you have to go help him."

JJ looks at Yuuri for a second, long enough that Yuuri can see the thought filter all the way through him. "What about--"

"The berserker was killed and scout's surrendered," Phichit says, jogging up behind Yuuri, scope still clenched in his hand. "Nadya and Viktor are down. Chris is fine."

JJ nods, turning to Mari. "Can you use Imperial controls?" He asks.

Mari shrugs. "First time for everything," she says. 

"I'll go in Felix," he says. "Follow behind and you can pilot back an imperial rig."

"What about Viktor?" Yuuri asks. He turns to Phichit. "Should you go or--"

"We're all trained to make someone field stable," JJ says. "It's better if Phichit is here to prepare what we might need. We'll ping him on his comm if things are severe enough."

Phichit nods. "Let's re-open the bay and get Felix out there," he says. "Come on, Yuuri."

* * *

#

The lightning cannon goes off, the aperture widening and the solid, crackling beam of hot, blue light tears out from it. It shrieks through the air and catches Nadya square on the chest. 

Viktor goes down suddenly, like gravity has suddenly fallen over Nadya's frame like a blanket. The aperture on the lightning cannon closes. 

Otabek doesn't say anything. He never does. Chris just sees Aiman's sturdy, unpainted hands take the scout's antenna and tear them off. There's a sharp whine on the air for a moment, comm signal searching but with nowhere to go. 

Chris draws back Caspar's strong, solid fist and drives it into the brawler. 

Once, Caspar was a unit for mining, owned by a wicked baron collaborating with the empire. Once, Caspar marched into the deep darkness to extract opals from the bowels of the wealthy earth. Once, Chris stole Caspar away from the mines, and himself, too.

The brawler is knocked back. There's a cracking, shattering sound. 

"Stay back!" Otabek calls over the comms. 

The lightning cannon aims back at Chris. 

The aperture doesn't open. 

"Stop firing!" Chris shouts. "Stop firing; it's jammed!"

Chris thinks maybe he imagines it. The way the cannon bulges, just barely, before it explodes open in a flash of loud, hot light. It's all Chris can see and hear, the way this machine self-destructs with the human cargo still nestled deep inside. 

There was a person in there. Now, there is a corpse. 

"Surrender," Otabek says over the comms, his voice calm and serious. He has Aiman positioned to destroy the battery core on the enemy scout. One good hit, and the machine would either shut down permanently or explode. 

No response. No movement. 

Aiman sweeps the scout's legs. The machine is knocked off balance, the legs pedaling uselessly on the air. 

"Surrender," Otabek repeats, his voice clear and sharp. 

There's a bare beat, before the green indicator lights on the front of the cockpit flash white, and then the cockpit pops open, hissing off gas. 

Chris is never sure what to expect in moments like these. They're rare; overwhelmingly, Imperials will let themselves die before capture. Usually, Viktor or the employer is awake. Usually, Chris isn't the one in charge. 

But he knows from the way Nadezhda had gone from upright to crumpled, and from the silence, that Viktor isn't awake in there. Viktor might not even--

Chris shakes his head. Doesn't think about it. Just watches the skinny, pale hands shoot up, open-palmed, from within the cockpit of the scout. 

"Stay there," Chris says, his voice firm.

Otabek hops out of Aiman, pulling a length of rope from his hip.

The imperial scout is no more than a boy. He barely looks older than thirteen; small and skinny, his face gaunt and drawn into a tight frown.  

None of them say anything as Otabek binds the captive's hands together, one-handed. He finishes and nudges the captive down, kneeling. He pulls his knife from his hip, holds it against the captive’s neck. 

Chris thinks on a different day he’d find the symmetry of Otabek subduing an imperial scout funny. 

It is not a different day.

The scout isn't in a uniform, or in things that even look like a uniform. His clothing is baggy and loose and shapeless. He eyes are trained downward, pulled into a tight, determined frown. His hair is wheat-blonde and lank around his face, like he hasn't washed it in weeks.

He's thin. 

None of them say anything until JJ comes crashing out of the brush, Mari following close behind on foot.

"Get Viktor out," Chris says to Otabek. "JJ, take the captive back to the castle."

"What happened?" Mari asks, looking at the scene. 

Chris guesses that from her eyes, it must look fairly bizarre. The crumpled trees. The scarred marks of dragged knights through the earth. The stiff but disturbingly naturalistic way Nadya is fallen on the ground. The scorch marks around the destroyed lightning cannon; the smoking wreck of metal and gore. Chris guesses that if this isn't something you just live with, it must require some kind of explanation. 

Felix's hand reaches out and carefully takes the prisoner, wrapping all the way around his body. JJ marches off. 

Chris lets his eyes close. He takes a deep breath. 

Otabek rests his hand over the center of Nadya's wide chest. There's a moment, before the cockpit slides open.

Viktor's not bleeding, at least not from this distance.

"He's out," Otabek calls, his voice clear. "Mari, can you pilot Aiman back? The only control mods are for the arms, but the nav is unmodified.”

Mari looks from Viktor to Aiman. She nods, gravely. "I think so," she says. "It'll be slow, though."

"Slow is fine," Chris says. "Otabek--"

Otabek nods, doesn't say anything more. He doesn't have to. He works quickly, gently, and pulls Viktor from Nadya's armor. Viktor’s shown them all before, the way to trigger the emergency opening-- sliding a hand up the carapace of the chest piece and pulling a particular lever while sliding the chest  _ up _ . It’s difficult, and not made easier by Otabek only having one damn arm.

Viktor hangs inside the cockpit, limply. His hair in his eyes, his neck lax, his arm and shoulder bent at a wrong, ugly angle. Otabek  tugs him carefully from the armor and then holds him carefully, his unbroken arm draped over his shoulders to balance him. Otabek pulls him out and away from Nadezhda so that Chris can reach forward with both of Caspar's hands and take him carefully. 

There's something about how Viktor doesn't move or twitch or react at all. Something about it that scares Chris so badly, the way few things have ever scared him before. 

It's hardly a moment before Otabek is seated in Nadezhda and Mari is in Aiman. It's hardly a moment, and then they are walking the long, silent miles back to the palace by the lake. 

* * *

They come in a staggered wave. First JJ in Felix, the three-fingered hand of his knight wrapped around--

Yuuri looks at their prisoner. 

Nishigori is there in armor, with him. Nishigori and Emil and Minami all, and although the armor is poorly fitting and Minami is easily a foot shorter than Yuuri, they're there. 

Yuuri looks at the prisoner, who looks like he could be hardly older than thirteen. He's tiny in overlarge clothes, his blonde hair crowded around his gaunt, angry face. Yuuri looks at the prisoner, and it hits him all at once that the guard with him, JJ, and the prisoner himself are all expecting him to know what to do. His mother is still deep in the palace with Minako. Mari is still with the rest of them, the lumbering frames of the knights becoming larger and larger on the horizon. 

Yuuri looks at the prisoner and he realizes that he's in charge. He's the heir.

He's Hasetsu. 

Yuuri glances over to Emil. "You and JJ, take him to the dungeon," he says. "Well figure out what to do with him later."

It's not a dungeon, formally. It's just a dark interior room beneath the palace. It's a dungeon inasmuch that's what he calls it when he plays with Nishigori's daughters. It's a dungeon inasmuch that there's one door they can guard easily. It's a dungeon inasmuch that it's where Yuuri has decided to put their prisoner. 

Felix's large hand moves slowly, placing the bound captive on the ground. He kneels onto his feet as Felix bends forward and down, cockpit opening, JJ leaping free. He and Emil take one arm each and lead the prisoner away. 

Yuuri stands there with Nishigori, with Minami, Felix bent empty and open before him, and he waits. 

It takes too long, waiting for the knights to come fully from the landscape into here. It's agonizing. 

Yuuri stands there, until Aiman, Nadya, and Caspar come all the way back, Viktor held limp in both of Caspar's huge hands.

Yuuri rushes out. "Give him to me!" He calls. "Please-- please, let me--"

"Yuuri!" Phichit shouts behind him, running out. "Don't! Chris-- let me grab the stretcher!"

Viktor looks so small and so still and so limp. He doesn't look real-- like some kind of doll. 

Yuuri stands there, at Caspar's feet, looking. Waiting. Overwhelmed and overcome. 

Phichit tears out from the palace with Yuuko, holding a stretcher between them. He lays it on the ground, and gestures for Chris to lay Viktor out. 

And he does and--

Yuuri can't hear anything. He can't feel anything. 

Viktor's arm. His face. His expression. 

There's a powerful, terrible absence. 

Phichit rushes to his side, laying his hands gingerly on his shoulder, his bicep. 

"Shit," he murmurs. "We're going to need to set this. No burns, though, that's good." 

"Let me help," Yuuri says. "Please; let me help."

Phichit unbuttons Viktor's shirt, the snaps pulling away quickly. His chest is bruised purple and red and green. He moves his hands over his sides. 

"I need someone strong to help me carrying him," he says, his eyes still fixed, determined, on Viktor. "We have to keep him level. If we move him, we could make things worse."

Nishigori shrugs out of his heavy plate and kneels low at the handles of the stretcher. "Where?" He asks. 

"My quarters," Yuuri says. "Where Phichit's staying."

Nishigori nods. Phichit takes the other end, and they rise together, carefully but quickly. 

"I can open the doors to the armory," Yuuri says, jogging to the wide wooden door under the raised steps of the palace. He almost trips over himself, tearing out of the dirt to get there. 

* * *

All at once, Viktor wakes up, sitting up and looking around and trying--

"Whoah, fuck! Viktor," someone shouts, and something hurts.

Viktor tries to sit up, tries to make sense of it but everything, everything is spinning and slipping and pulling away. It's all too much, all at once. 

"Calm down, okay, lay down," they say, again. "I'm trying to help you, okay? Calm down!"

The room won't slow down. Viktor closes his eyes tight but the spinning won't stop. It won't calm down; won't become normal again. He's dizzy. Nauseous.

He thinks he says something; all he knows is that he opens his mouth and vomits, acid stinging his nose and throat. 

"Shit!" Someone says, and there's some noise and then hands are helping him lean, wiping at his mouth and chest. 

There's more noise. More hands. Someone slides behind Viktor, supporting him in sitting up. 

"I need to see his eyes," someone says, and then it's bright and it hurts.

Viktor groans. 

"I know," a voice behind him says. He feels the sound all around him, from behind his back. "I know."

"We have to set his shoulder," someone says. "The longer we wait the worse it'll be."

There's more conversation. More sound. And then there's--

Viktor realizes it's him screaming. His own voice, scraped raw against his throat. 

"Hurts! It hurts!" He screams, his face wrenched together, his lungs screaming for breath. There's a grinding feeling and then a snap and then the pain changes. It goes less sharp and more a low, throbbing ache. 

"He needs a sling," someone says. 

"Don't move, Viktor," the voice behind him says. "Please don't move."

It hurts, it hurts, and then there's nothing again.

* * *

* * *

It makes something ache in him, the way Viktor is here but not here. The way Viktor drifts in and out of being awake, of being here and then there. The way he moans, the way he starts to say things, getting lost. The way he cries. Yuuri holds Viktor while Phichit pulls his arm into a sling, keeping his shoulder dragged down, in position. The hours are grinding.

Chris holds his legs down, keeping him from kicking, from jerking. 

"He's hurt his head," Phichit says, moving to a case on the floor. He opens a drawer and pulls out two bottles. "Yuuri, hold this under his nose. It'll wake him up so we can give him something for the nausea." 

Yuuri nods, holding the bottle. There's a moment, before Viktor coughs and coughs and coughs and then he's blinking and bolting again straining against Yuuri's grasp on him, his blue eyes searching wildly. 

Viktor says something in a quick, clipped way-- something Yuuri can't quite catch. 

"Viktor," Yuuri says, trying to find his eyes, to make him look at him, even upside down and lying down. "Viktor, you're safe. You're safe, you're here with me." It’s what he’s been telling him for hours. Every time he’s surfaced from inside himself.  _ You’re safe. You’re here with me. You’re safe. _

Phichit pours something out of the bottle and into a glass of water. 

"Viktor," Yuuri says, trying to sound calm and grounded. "Viktor, we woke you up because you need to take some medicine."

Viktor's blue eyes find his, and he still looks lost for just a moment. 

"You're safe," Yuuri repeats. "You're here with me and Phichit and we need you to take some medicine."

Viktor opens his mouth, as if to say something, but then he closes it. He looks confused and groggy. His pupils are blown too wide and dark, leaving the blue in his eyes just a thin ring. He looks at Yuuri, his brow wrinkling. 

"We have to run," he says, finally. He sounds strange. Tired and sad to his soul. "We have to run."

"Viktor, we need you to drink this," Phichit says, his voice calm and serious.

Viktor tries to sit up. Yuuri holds him back. "Vitya," he says, trying to keep himself calm, "Phichit made you some medicine, it'll help. I promise. I promise Vitya; I just need you to be still and stay awake for me."

Viktor blinks a couple times. He looks pale and lost and sweaty and scared. 

"No time for princes," he says, like the words have fought each other all at once to leap off his tongue. 

Phichit tips the glass carefully into Viktor's mouth. Viktor swallows the medicine without incident, without even coughing. 

"You're safe," Yuuri says. 

_ Yakov found me in Sanktpet. _

"You're safe with me," Yuuri says. 

Viktor looks up at him, for a long time. Yuuri looks back, as he drifts back to sleep, and he watches him sleep. 

"Can you light a lantern?" Yuuri asks, keeping his voice low.

Phichit nods. 

They're going to be here all night. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just realize i haven't been putting the chapter titles in like a dork.


	6. shoots

"Yuuri," Mari says, peering into the room. "You have to come."

Viktor is asleep, in Yuuri's lap. He hasn't woken in hours. His expression is relaxed and calm. Phichit is asleep on the floor, on a bedroll taken from his gear.

Yuuri hasn't slept since they brought Viktor in. He hasn't slept, holding him and making sure his shoulder stays set in the sling and that he is soothed through the nightmares that threaten him every hour or so. Yuuri hasn't slept since they brought Viktor in-- the rest of the day, the nightfall, and now into the small hours of the morning, just before sunrise.

Yuuri's been waiting. He's known that this has been coming.

"Okay," he says. He nods. He moves carefully, easing Viktor gingerly out of his lap and cushioning him with the flat pillows on the bed. Viktor stirs, just barely.

Yuuri brushes his silvery hair from his face. He looks at him, one last time, before he follows his sister out of the room and into the hall.

Yuuri knows it's been borrowed time he's had here, with Viktor, and now he must face his responsibilities.

Mari leads Yuuri out of the hall and down the stairs and from the garret through the palace. Down, down, down and deep-- past the residences and through the pantries and into deepest, most secure interior space.

Nishigori and Emil stand in front of the door. Both in full armor, helmets too. They look overwhelmingly official. Real.

Minako is there. His mother, too.

Yuuri looks at all of them.

"How is he?" his mother asks him, her voice soft.

"Sleeping," Yuuri answers. It's all he knows.

She nods. Her hands are folded in front of her belly, tightly and flat.

"Minako and I have been talking," she says.

She moves her hands, which shake just a little . She moves her hands to present to Yuuri--

He looks at it. He looks at the shining, flat-beaten collar terminated on either end by the wide, cruel curvature of a boar's tusks.

Yuuri looks up from the collar back to his mother.

He never thought this would happen, not actually.

"You must lead us," she says. "Through the season and back home, Yuuri."

Yuuri feels quite cold, suddenly.

His own hands shake as he takes it. The metal is warm from his mother's tight hold over it. He imagines it’s warm from all the years she wore it herself, and warm from all the years his father wore it. His father’s parents before him.

"Your father gave it me as we left," she says. "We knew it would be our children's. We knew it would be important."

Yuuri looks at Mari. Mari's gaze is steady and calm and sad.

Yuuri nods.

"You are the boar," Minako says. Her voice is measured. "You are the boar; the fierceness and determination and sharpness of your ancestors. Our protector. Our leader. Katsuki Yuuri, Lord Duke of Hasestsu. Our warrior. The boar."

Yuuri slips the collar around his neck. It presses on his collarbones, pushing his shoulders down. The weight of the thing. The weight of the knowing.

"Who is he?" Yuuri asks, looking up at Minako, his advisor to the court. “Our prisoner-- who is he?”

* * *

 

* * *

There's a lantern in the room. An oil lantern, steady and bright, casting away the shadows that crowd around his ankles as he sits in the tiny room, arms and legs bound around the chair.

He's tired. His shoulders hurt. So do his hips and knees. The armor didn't fit him right-- maybe in a few years it will. He's too young to wear armor. Everyone old enough is already dead.

Yuri sits in capture and hopes the lantern doesn't go out; he hates the dark.

He takes a deep breath.

He hopes they don't torture him. He hopes it takes years for the empire to find out and for them to tell his grandfather. He hopes it takes years for them to take his pension away from his grandfather. Yuri hopes it's years.

The room is just big enough for the chair and for Yuri. There's shelving, full of bags and bins and boxes. There's a few sacks on the floor. It's dry.

Yuri hopes they don't torture him.

The door opens and someone steps in. He's taller than Yuri, and older. He has a serious face, with thick, dark eyebrows. His clothes fit him closely. Tailored.

He has money.

He looks at Yuri for a long moment, before he says, "How old are you?"

Yuri looks at the strangers' sturdy, solid body. His severity. His confidence.

"Sixteen," he answers. That's the age of conscription. That's what his papers say.

The stranger shakes his head. "Where are you from?"

"Empire," Yuri replies.

"Your name?"

"Soldier," Yuri answers.

The stranger looks at him, before he says, "When did you last sleep?"

Yuri frowns.

No one told him they would ask that. He knows that there must be a reason why.

"What about eating?" the stranger asks.

"Empire provides rations," Yuri answers. This he has an answer to.

The stranger looks at him. Knocks on the door. It opens again, and he steps out of the room. It is just Yuri and the shadows again.

Yuuri counts two full minutes of seconds before he hears muffled shouting. It's another three minutes of seconds before the door opens again, and the stranger walks back in.

"I am going to escort you to the kitchens, where you will be fed," he says. "And then to quarters, where you will rest."

Yuri looks at him. He doesn't say anything.

"I am your escort," he says. "I will unbind your legs and guide you up from the chair, and you will follow myself and the guards. Is that clear?"

He looks tired. He has dark bags under his eyes.

Yuri nods.

The escort opens the door. There's two guards in armor-- the ones that brought him in here. It looks like burnished leather and beat copper. It's not sleek or light like the armor he saw on the high ranking officers. It looks sturdy. Used. There's also one of the pilots there, the one who came after he was captured. The guards have tall, vicious looking glaives. The pilot has his hand positioned over a sheath for a knife. His one hand. His shirt is folded up to the shoulder and pinned on the right side.

The escort moves behind him, and after some tugging, his legs are unbound. The escort tugs up on Yuri's wrists and he stands. He was right-- his captor is taller than him.

"Step out of the room," the escort says.

Yuri's legs have pins and needles. He steps out of the room and into the dark, cool bottom basement. The escort's hand are steady on his bindings at the wrist.

"To the kitchens," the escort says. The guards nod.

"Wait," the pilot says. He pulls a bandanna from his pocket and hands it to one of the guards. The guard ties it around Yuri's eyes. He can't see anything.

As if there were anywhere for him to go if he escaped.

The hand remains steady. The footsteps are the only sound, beside the occasional instruction to wait a moment or being told there are stairs. There are quite a lot of stairs. The basement must be deep. The fort must be small, to lack a prison.

Yuri is seated back down. The blindfold is removed.

The kitchen is huge. There's a stove and countertops and tables, all covered in baskets and containers and dishes and food. There's so much food.

In front of him is a wide, deep bowl. There's rice in it, and eggs sliced in half. Some vegetables that he can't recognize. The bindings around his wrists are released. His shoulders ache as he pulls his hands forward to twist his wrists, get the feeling back. He can feel the two guards behind him. The escort is in front of him, seated on the other side of the table.

The escort gestures. "Please," he says.

Yuri looks at it for a long moment. He looks back at his escort.

"You first," he says.

The escort looks confused for a moment. His dark brows furrow.

"He believes it may be poisoned," the pilot says. He's standing to the side, with an apple on the table and the knife in his hand. He slices the top off of the apple and then carefully begins to peel it.

The escort looks taken aback. His hands are steady though, as he reaches out and takes a bite, grabbing some of the rice and the vegetables. He chews it, before he swallows.

Yuri nods. He grabs the bowl and tears into it greedily, sucking the brown sauce the vegetables are swimming in eagerly from his fingers.

It's delicious. It's the most food he's ever had.

He looks up from the bowl to see the escort, aghast, holding two sticks in front of himself, offering them to Yuri.

He looks at them and back to the escort.

"To eat with?" The escort says, his voice nervous.

Yuri looks at them, quizzically.

The escort takes them in his hand, holding them with a space in between, the tapered ends touching. He moves them. He picks up a stray grain of rice from the table with them, and pops it in his mouth.

Yuri looks into the bowl, looks at his hands.

He puts the bowl down and wipes his hands on this pants. His holds his hands out, and the escort carefully hands him the utensils.

Yuri tries to position his hands right. Tries to get it right, to be polite.

He grabs the bowl back and finishes it with his hands. He's so hungry. He's been so hungry, all his life.

"My name is Yuuri," the escort says.

Yuri looks up at him.

"Soldier," he repeats. He has no name. He's a captive. He's with the enemy. The less information he gives, the better. He remembers what they told him. He remembers the training. He remembers. He'll be good. He can be good.

Yuuri-- the escort who has his name but not quite-- nods.

Yuri finishes eating. He puts the bowl back down and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He considers picking the bowl back up and licking it more thoroughly.

The guards step back behind him. Take his hands and tie them back up. Yuri closes his eyes. Waits for the blindfold.

"We are going to take you back to the dungeon," Yuuri says. "A different room, though. We will place you with a bed and blanket so you may rest. There will be guards at your door. We have all been awake all night. We will all sleep, and decide what to do with you tomorrow."

"Please let it be quick," Yuri says.

Yuuri's brow furrows again.

"When you kill me, let it be quick," he repeats.

Yuuri's frown intensifies. "We will not harm you," he says. He sounds shocked.

"Just let it be quick," Yuri says. "Please."

"We do not kill prisoners," Yuuri says. His voice is firm and serious. "We will not kill you."

Yuri knows better. Yuri knows there is no honor in war, and no mercy for prisoners.

* * *

Yuuri locks the door. The chair the scout had been tied to has been cleared out of the room. Everything has, except a metal bowl full of water, a mattress, and a blanket. It's the only room they can effectively guard the scout in. It's the only room they can hide him in.

Yuuri hangs the key on a string around his neck and looks at the door for a long time. The lamplight ekes weakly out from underneath the door. That's another thing Yuuri supposes they left in there-- light.

He's a child. He's a child. Yuuri looks at the door that divides himself from his prisoner and all he can think, running a constant, anxious track in his mind, is that their prisoner is a child.

He looks at Emil and Nishigori. They're both standing tall and proud in front of the door, the ends of the spears sharp and shining in the air. Their expressions serious and grim.

"If he says anything or knocks or needs anything, send for me," he says.

Nishigori nods.

Yuuri turns away from the door and walks quickly, urgently, up through the palace once more and into the throne room, where his mother and sister and Minako all sit.

Yuuri feels the weight of the boar-tusk collar like a hand around the column of his throat.

He looks at all three of them. It's just them. No one else. With the exception of Emil and Nishigori, the only ones who know right now that Yuuri is-- that Yuuri's not just heir now-- are in the room.

He wants to collapse.

He steps forward and sits down, in the place he's always sat.

He takes a deep breath, before looking over to his mother.

"Yuuri," she says, her voice soft and firm. "The throne."

Yuuri looks over at it. At the carved boars emerging from the top of it, at the turquoise cushion, at the dark wood. He looks at it and he shakes his head.

"Mama," he murmurs. "Please, not yet. Not when it's just us. Please."

"What did you learn?" Minako asks, from the other side of the room.

Yuuri takes a deep breath.

"He's a child," he says. "He's a child. He can't be older than-- he's maybe thirteen. And he's starving. We took him to the kitchens, to eat something. He ate with his hands and licked them clean. He has an injured left leg-- something wrong in the hip, he limps. He's dirty. He's a child. He's a child, Minako, our prisoner is a child. The empire has sent us child soldiers. What do I do? What do we do?"

Yuuri looks away from Minako. Away from his mother and Mari. He studies the woven texture of the floor. He studies his own hands.

"Why were they here?" Minako asks. "Are more coming?"

Yuuri swallows, dryly. "I don't know," he says. "I couldn't ask. I tried--" Yuuri takes a deep breath. "He thinks we're going to execute him."

"Aren't we?" Minako asks.

"He's a child," Yuuri shouts. "I will not execute children!"

"That answers one of your questions, then, doesn't it?" She says. "We're not executing him. What do we do with him instead?"

Yuuri takes a deep breath. "We feed him," he says. "And-- and I guess, when the time comes to leave for Hasetsu, we leave him here. I guess." He swallows. "We don't torture him and we don't kill him. We don't tell him anything he doesn't have to know, but we don't torture him and we don't kill him."

The silence that falls in the room is uneasy. Unsteady.

"We are at war," Minako says. "Are we certain this is wise?"

"I am certain I am not a torturer, and I do not kill prisoners of war in cold blood," Yuuri answers. "That's not who we are. We are not torturers. We aren't. We can't be."

He looks over at his mother and at his sister.

Mari gestures vaguely, loosely, with her hand. "Okay," she says. "I guess. Okay."

His mother nods. "Of course, Yuuri," she replies.

Yuuri swallows. He clenches his fists, hard, against his knees. "You aren't just telling me that because...because I'm the duke now?" He asks.

"It is your decision," his mother says.

"So you think I'm making a mistake?" Yuuri asks.

"We're at war!" Minako shouts, her voice clear and sharp. "We've been at war your whole life, Yuuri! Do you think if you were captured by that scout he would show you mercy?"

"If we torture him, what makes us different from the empire?" Yuuri counters. "Why bother resisting? Why bother hiding all these years?"

"What choice do we have?" Mari asks him, suddenly.

"How is it really a choice?" Yuuri replies. "How can--"

"Violence is the price we pay for survival," Minako interrupts. "In times like these, when men take arms against men, we are all forced to become things we fear."

"If torturing and killing a child is the price I must pay to survive, then I am not sure I care to live," Yuuri answers, automatically, stubbornly, stupidly. He says it and realizes immediately that it's true. It's true. He takes a deep breath and stands up. "If torturing and killing a child without a second thought is the task you ask of the duke, then the responsibility should have fallen to someone else. I am going to see to our injured mercenary. Good day."

He turns and he leaves and he doesn't slow down or stop or think until he makes it all the way back up the stairs and through the hall and back to the doorway leading into his permanent quarters, now Phichit's clinic, now where Viktor lies healing. Yuuri stands at the door for a long, quiet moment, and he takes off the collar and slides it into fold surrounding the waist of his pants. Secure. Secret.

Yuuri takes a deep breath before he knocks on the door.

* * *

It's the worst headache Viktor's ever had, the one he has when he opens his eyes in the unfamiliar room.

It's too bright in here. He groans, moves to wipe his eyes, but it hurts. He hisses.

"Fuck," he mutters. He opens his eyes again and tries to sit up.

"You're awake?" Someone asks. He looks up. Phichit is on the floor, covered by a blanket, his dark hair sticking up in every direction imaginable.

Viktor squints at him, still adjusting to the bright room. "Yeah," he says. His voice crackles on the air.

"Oh thank god, you seem lucid," he says. He runs his hands through his hair and gets up from the floor, groaning. Viktor's in a bed nestled into a cut shelf. "Don't move, okay? You have a concussion and I think you broke a shoulder. You've got bruises to back that up at least, and given the knock you took from the cannon it wouldn't surprise me."

"What happened?" he asks.

"Chris and Otabek finished it," he says. He fiddles around in his bag for a moment, back to Viktor. "The scout is our prisoner right now. Chris went back and got his mech, too, so we've got a spare set of armor right now. Or at the very least parts. He’s working on repairing it-- the legs are still kind of fucked."

"Berserker?" Viktor asks.

"Cannon went critical," Phichit answers. "He didn't live."

Viktor's got a sling around one arm, looping up around his neck. He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath.

"My head hurts," he says.

"That's the concussion," Phichit says, turning around. He's holding a cup with something rust colored rapidly dispersing into the liquid. "This is for the pain. It'll make you a little drowsy, though."

"I'm fine," Viktor says.

"You're not," Phichit replies. He sits down in a chair beside the bed. "You're injured and you're healing and you'll heal faster if you let me treat the pain. Drink this and rest."

"Is Nadya okay?" he asks.

"I've been here with you making sure you stayed alive through the night, I have honestly no clue how your fucking armor is, Viktor," Phichit sighs. "You'll be all hurt if I tell you it doesn't matter but the fact is, it doesn't. You're alive. We're figuring out what to do next. For now, heal."

Viktor takes another deep breath. "Can you at least help me sit up?" He asks.

Phichit nods, and he helps him up carefully, supporting his back and being careful not to jostle his shoulder. He props up his back with a pillow from his bedroll on the floor. It's not quite comfortable, but Viktor feels better like this. In control. He takes the cup and drains it. The taste is vaguely metallic and bitter.

"Is everyone else okay?" Viktor asks. He feels a brisk moment of guilt, that he'd ask about his armor before he asks about his men.

"They're all fine," Phichit says. "The scout’s barely dinged up. Yuuri’s worried about him being malnourished and a limp, but it’s nothing like when we found Otabek. Everything's fine."

Viktor takes another long, steadying breath. _Fuck_ , he's sore.

"They know we're here," Viktor murmurs. "There's no other reason why they came."

"Well," Phichit sighs. "It's a good thing they hired us then, eh?"

Viktor tries to laugh, but his torso aches fiercely. He grimaces.

"I think you broke ribs, too," Phichit says. "I saw what happened with the binoculars. It was hideous."

Viktor sighs. "Every battle's the last battle," he says. "We do dangerous work, Phichit."

There's a knock on the door, before it opens and Yuuri steps back into the room.

"You look like shit," Phichit says, looking at him.

"Fuck off," Yuuri replies.

Phichit laughs. "Sleeping beauty is up," he says. "Although he should probably keep on bedrest."

Viktor waves from the bed, weakly.

Yuuri's brown eyes settle on him. His expression shifts. Viktor wishes he knew what it meant, the way the light in Yuuri's eyes flickers just barely, the way his eyebrows pull downward ever so slightly, the subtlest turn of his lips. Viktor wishes he could read it in the quickest moment it's there, but it's gone, and Yuuri doesn't quite smile at him, but he does take a long breath and let his head roll to the side, pulling his slender neck long from the joining of his shoulder.

"Viktor," he says, quietly. "How are you?"

"I am on death's very door," he says, before he can think to stop himself. "Any moment and I will slip surely from this feeble existence."

Yuuri huffs quiet, sparkling laughter and he walks all the way into the room, sits down at Viktor's bedside. He reaches out to him, brushes his bangs from his forehead. The drag is sweaty and dusty, and Yuuri's fingers are cool and soft. He brushes over a sore spot and Viktor hisses. Yuuri stops, frozen. He looks at him.

"Viktor," Yuuri says, just as Viktor himself says Yuuri's name.

Both of them stop.

Yuuri bites his lip.

"I'm glad you're okay," Yuuri says. "I was scared."

Viktor sighs, just barely. He looks away from Yuuri, over to the windowsill. "Don't be scared for me, Yuuri; I'm a soldier. This is my job," he murmurs.

Viktor looks back over. Yuuri's adam's apple bobs in his throat.

Phichit's not in the room anymore. The door is closed. It's just the two of them and the sunlight.

Yuuri looks at Viktor, and his expression looks pained. His hands are held flat against his stomach, against the wide folded waistband of his pants.

"I was supposed to know," he says, his voice very soft and serious.

Viktor frowns, involuntarily. "I don't understand," he murmurs.

He swallows. His throat feels dry; his mouth feels stale. His head aches.

"I failed you," Yuuri says. "I was foolish and I didn't read the dancing right, and you got hurt and I failed you. I didn't do my job and you got hurt."

Viktor shakes his head. "Yuuri, you can't think that. You can't think you're responsible for everything. You can't-- it was a sudden attack."

"We're supposed to know, and we know because I do my duty and I protect my people," Yuuri says. "Viktor, I'm so sorry."

This is a first for him. Being apologized to because he got hurt doing his job. Doing his job, in an incident that isn't even his employer's fault. Viktor looks at Yuuri. At his terrifying duty.

Yuuri doesn't meet his eyes. He looks forward, down.

"There's something I need to tell you," he says, his voice very quiet and very serious.

* * *

Yuri wakes up in the dark.

He takes a deep breath, and another. He tries to keep himself calm; tries to slow his heart down, tries to keep himself from crying out, from saying anything. Yuri tries to count down from twenty, dragging his breath longer and longer so he can calm down and get his bearings and hold himself together.

It takes a long, long minute. It takes a long time, and when it finally happens, he manages to remember.

He's been captured. He's not in the barracks. He's not in Muscoiy.

He's been captured. He's in capture. He's a prisoner. This is prison. This is the dungeon. This is his death.

Yuri sits up and closes his eyes. He takes another deep, steadying breath, and he opens his eyes again.

It's still dark in the room, dark enough that the only thing he can see is a sliver of light along the edges of the door, silvery and barely brighter than the room itself.

Yuri stares at it.

He thinks about what the escort told him. Yuuri. His name his own. His name different.

_We do not kill prisoners._

Yuri remembers seeing the swaying bodies in the gallows. Everyone kills prisoners. There is no point in feeding a mouth that would as soon kill you, even if it lies about its age.

He takes another breath and stands up. He taps on the door.

There's nothing for a moment. He considers that his door might be unguarded; that he might be alone. He considers that this could be a trap, or that maybe he is just being ignored. There's nothing for a moment, and then the sound of a key twisting in a lock and the door opens.

Yuri hisses; the light hurts his eyes.

"Your lantern went out," someone says.

Yuri forces his eyes back open to the light. It's the pilot, the one that bound his wrists. The one who peeled the apple with one hand.

"Where am I?" Yuri demands.

"Here," the pilot answers.

Yuri wants to fucking kill him. He can't; the pilot is larger than him and broader and likely armed. Yuri wants to knock him out and tear out his throat with his bare hands.

"Where is here?" Yuri asks.

The pilot looks at him, before he says, firmly, "The duke will not kill you, and he will not order me to kill you. This does not entitle you to information."

Yuri spits at the pilot's feet, onto his boots.

The pilot keeps looking at him.

"You have told us nothing either," he says. "I am unsure why we should do you favors if you do none for us."

"There is no treachery; only death," Yuri says. He remembers it from training. He remembers barking it in all the hours of the day. He remembers being told the honors stripped from those foolish enough to succumb to torture.

 _Traitors receive no pensions,_ the commandant had barked _. No meals for traitor’s mothers._

The pilot holds him under his steady gaze. Yuri wonders if he expects him to squirm.

"Nishigori," the pilot calls. "Hold the prisoner. I intend to relight his lamp."

A guard appears. He assesses Yuri before he steps forward and takes his hands behind his back, firm and tight.

The pilot steps into the room. There's a sound, of a lantern being placed on a shelf. The cover opens. There's the rasp of a match along friction paper, and then there's light.

Yuri looks at the lantern. He looks at the room. He looks at the pilot; feels the guard's hold on his hands.

"You are a soldier," he says, tossing the match on the ground. "You have your duty, your allegiance. I did once, too. Some advice, I was told once, when I was in your position." He steps close to Yuri. His eyes are the color of aged iron.

"Your enemies are much closer than your allies," he says. "And the empire has never been a kind ally to you. It is wise to consider this."

Yuri looks at him. He doesn't say anything.

"My name is Otabek," he says.

Yuri looks at his rigid posture. At his closely cut hair and his hard, serious eyes.

No treachery, only death. But this Otabek would know better than Yuri. He is a product of the empire, too.

Yuri doesn't say anything as he's pressed back into his prison, the door shut behind him.

He sits there, his only company the lamp.

* * *


	7. stealing time

It's strange the way time passes. 

Viktor's not sure how long it is. The pain medication makes him drowsy; torpid. He sleeps through the day and night, only waking up to Phichit's prodding and poking and to bowls of water and broth pressed to his lips. Slowly, like the easing of a tide, his headache disappears. 

He doesn't see Yuuri. 

He doesn't see the duke. 

Time passes. Viktor has trouble telling how much. 

It's a noonbright hour, sun big and heavy in the sky. The air in the chamber is lazy, sticky against Viktor's skin. There's a mosquito in the room, flying fat and lazy circuits. Viktor's been in here for what feels like weeks. 

"Phichit," Viktor moans, watching the doctor crush poultices and measure tinctures. "How long am I grounded?"

"Until your shoulder heals some more," Phichit answers, without looking up or pausing. "That break has me nervous and armor is hard enough on all of you without adding injury to it. It's been barely three days, Viktor. Be patient."

Viktor sighs. It'd be easier if he weren't so bored. 

As suddenly as Viktor thinks it, there's a knock on his door and Chris and JJ practically explode into his room. JJ is holding a tray stacked with bowls and Chris has a teakettle in one hand and a spare set of clothes for Viktor in the other. 

"Phichit won't let us spring you," JJ says. 

"We thought you might like company," Chris says. 

Viktor laughs, weakly. His chest still hurts, which is unsurprising considering the garden of purple and grey across his ribs. "Took you long enough," he says. 

"You count yourself lucky I'm here to keep you cooped up," Phichit retorts. He closes a bottle and turns around in the small chair at the desk. "You must have been born under kind stars that you keep a healer as talented as I am around, Feltsman."

"We've been busy," Chris replies over Viktor's laughter. He shuts the door behind them. He tosses Viktor's clothes in his lap. He sets out four bowls for tea and fills each of them, while JJ distributes bowls of rice with pickles and egg. 

Viktor pokes around in his food with the chopsticks before he shovels a bite into his mouth. "Did Yuuri finally put you into the kitchen?" he asks. 

JJ scoffs. 

"You left a mess," Chris says, like this is an answer. "We've been cleaning up."

"What kind of mess?" Viktor asks. He takes another bite. He tries to stay breathing, to block the rapidly enlarging fear in his stomach. "Where's Otabek?" 

Chris, in turn, takes a long, steadying breath. He sits down on the floor, across from Viktor. He crosses his legs. 

"Has anyone told you about the scout?" He asks. 

Viktor shakes his head.

“I fucking did,” Phichit says. “But your concussed ass forgot. Almost like you need to  _ rest _ or something. But what do I know! I’m just the company doctor!” 

"You fought two," JJ says, pressing on in spite of Phichit’s outburst. "One died. The other is prisoner." 

Viktor takes a breath; it comes in the wrong way and makes his ribs ache. He winces, draws his left hand over his torso "Where's Otabek?" He asks again. 

"Nishigori and Otabek are leading the guard on the prisoner," Chris answers. "While Yuuri figures out what to do with him."

"Was it the one that fired on me?" Viktor asks.

Chris shakes his head. "Even if it were, Yuuri's been clear that the prisoner is not to be harmed."

Viktor takes a deep breath. He wishes it felt like it would ground him, stabilize him. It doesn't. 

"Otabek is keeping an eye on him," Chris says. "You remember, when we brought him in."

"That was different," Viktor says. 

"Otabek doesn't think so," Chris answers. 

"It's not Otabek's company," Viktor spits. 

"Well, funny that, it seems our fearless leader has been laid up with major injuries and will be laid up longer yet," Chris says. JJ snorts into his tea. 

Viktor sighs. He's not going to get any further on this front. 

"How's Nadya?" he asks. 

Chris flinches. 

JJ makes direct eye contact with him. 

"I'm going to be honest with you," he says. "It's not great."

* * *

Yuuri stands in the kitchen, chopping cabbage, fretting. 

Time has been passing. The rice grows tall under the heavy, bright summer sun. The days are long. Time has been passing, and it has weighed on Yuuri. Time has been passing, barely a week, and Yuuri has barely seen Viktor, and he hasn't seen the prisoner again. 

The prisoner. They still don't even know the boy's name. Yuuri wants to know; he wants to know everything about him. He wants to know where he came from. He wants to know why he's here and what he wants. Yuuri wants--

Yuuri's not sure what he wants, but there's something immediate to the prisoner-- to the boy-- that Yuuri feels obliged to protect.

But he's also terrified that he'd run back to the empire and set them running before the rice is ready for harvest. 

Yuuri stands in the kitchen, chopping cabbage and scooping it into a large bowl to be fried a bit before being added to dumplings. 

_ It's dangerous for you in the field _ , Mari had said.  _ You need to stay guarded. _

So Yuuri is in the kitchen. Not fishing in the lake or weeding or pulling the vermin from the field. Yuuri is in the kitchen, being useful in the only ways he knows how. 

Yuuri grates a knob of ginger against a fretted board. 

Viktor hasn't talked to him. He hasn't left his room and he hasn't asked for him. Yuuri hasn't seen Viktor since he first woke up. Since Yuuri told him. 

Yuuri's not sure when everyone else found out. He thinks Minako must have told them. 

Everything is different. Everyone treats him differently. Everyone acts differently. 

Yuuri could scream. 

Someone walks in. Yuuri hears their footsteps. He grates ginger. 

"I could kill you right now, if I wanted to," Otabek says, from behind him. "You are unguarded and unaware."

Yuuri drops the ginger into the bowl. He takes a deep breath. 

"I heard you come in," he says. "And I'm holding a knife."

"Do you know what to do with it?" he asks. 

Yuuri looks at it. The blade is broad and long-- nearly as broad as his hand across. The edge is sharp and well honed. It's a knife for cabbage, not for stabbing. Not the kind of knife he used in sparring with Minako and Mari. 

He holds it firmly, along the handle and up along the blunted top. Slashing. Harder to be fatal, but can still keep an enemy at arm's length from him. 

"Yes," he says. 

"Have you killed before?" Otabek asks him. 

Yuuri feels the weight of the sunlight on his shoulders. 

"You are a duke," he continues. "You must be prepared to defend yourself. You must be prepared to kill."

"I won't kill him," Yuuri says. 

"Are you prepared to die instead?" he asks. 

Yuuri looks at the knife in his hand. 

"I was younger than him, the first time I killed a man," Otabek says. "He was a prisoner. He escaped. Ran into our barracks. He begged, your grace, for mercy." 

Yuuri turns, holding the knife with the edge facing outward. Otabek's eyes are steel. Flint. Hard and cold, looking at him. 

"I was younger than he is," he repeats. "The empire has only grown more desperate in the years since I left it. More desperate, more hideous, more bloodthirsty. If he escapes-- will you kill him, your grace, or will you die at his hand?"

Yuuri lowers the knife, slowly. He sighs. 

"He still hasn't said anything?" Yuuri asks. 

"He doesn't like the dark," Otabek answers. "He's silent, though."

"If he's afraid of dark, put him in the sunlight," Yuuri says.

Otabek looks at him. 

Yuuri shrugs. "We aren't the empire. I'm not the empire. I won't torture him. I won't kill him. If he's afraid of the dark, put him in the sunlight." 

Otabek nods. "Of course, your grace," he says, before he bows slowly and leaves the kitchen. 

Yuuri watches him go, and then he looks at his hold on the knife before dropping it on the kitchen counter, jerking away from it. 

He's not a killer. He's not a killer. 

He takes a deep breath. He pulls off the apron and heads outside. He's been cooped up inside too long, driving himself crazy. The door swings open, and there's the fumbling noise of a suit of armor rearranging itself suddenly. 

"Yuuri! Or-- uh, Duke Katsuki," Minami calls, jogging after him. "Wait-- you! Wait, please!"

Yuuri ignores him, though. He ignores him and he keeps jogging, until he makes it outside, and then there's the cascading steps, all the way down, and then there's the trail and the dock, and then there's just the path, leading into the woods. 

Yuuri runs, following his feet, down the path and to Minako's house.

Yuuri stops there. Stops at her door. 

He takes a deep breath. He waits there for just a moment. He hears something, in the trees. The birds lift from the branches and alight onto the air. 

Yuuri steps inside. 

Minako's not here. The house is empty. Silent. Her futon is stashed away. Her clothing-- her possessions-- are packed away. It's empty. It's like no one lives here. 

Yuuri closes the door.

Yuuri knows well enough that just because he is the only one in this room, he isn't alone.

Yuuri looks into the room, at the wooden floors, at the walls, at the paper charm hung over the doorway. 

Yuuri closes his eyes.  

He takes a deep, deep breath. 

This is foolish. This is definitely a mistake. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" Yuuri asks. Not in the language he usually asks in-- not in his body, just in his voice. A less powerful instrument, he knows. 

He thinks maybe he doesn't want to be heard. 

"They got-- " He pauses. "Viktor got hurt. I was supposed to know and now everything's different. I was supposed to know. Why didn't you tell me?" 

"Yuuri--" Minako says, bursting through the door, into the room. 

Yuuri turns to look at her, alone. Bereft. 

"Yuuri," Minako sighs, looking at him. "You have to be careful. What if--"

"Why is everything so much more dangerous than it was before?" Yuuri demands. "We were always this vulnerable. I was always me. It was always them, it was always us! Why did everything have to-- why is everything so different?"

Yuuri feels the words tear out of him. Like some kind of foreign, angry, awful force. 

"Why didn't I know?" Yuuri cries. "I live all my life so that I can know, and I didn't, Minako-- why didn't I know?"

"Yuuri," Minako sighs, softly. "It's not your fault."

"I didn't do my duty, Minako. It's my fault. We didn't know and now everything's different and Viktor got hurt. We didn't know. I didn't know. Why didn't--" Yuuri gestures into the room, into the empty, lonesome space. "Why didn't I know?"

Yuuri closes his eyes. He takes a breath, that shudders through him, pulls against his lungs and skin and body. Yuuri closes his eyes. "What did I do wrong?" He asks. 

But there's no answer, just failure.

* * *

It's late, when Viktor wakes up.  

He knows it's late because all the lanterns outside have long been extinguished. He knows because even the sound of bats and moths is distant. It's late because Phichit's breath is heavy on the air, from where he's lying on a pallet on the floor. It's late because it's dark, well and truly dark, in a way that only happens in the high summer in the deepest part of the night. 

Viktor lays on the bed and tries to make sense of the dream he had. He has a dream like this one sometimes, when he's been hurt. There's fire. Something falling apart, something beautiful and shining and strange. Voices. Running. There's fire and smoke and then--then there's just nothing. Emptiness. 

Viktor can't sleep. 

The medication that Phichit has been giving him makes him drowsy through the day; heavy and torpid and stupid and slow. He hates it; he hates the slow feeling more than he hates the pain, which is worse than he'd like but not the worst he's ever endured, even in those hours between a dosage of medicine and it fading long out of his system. 

Viktor lies in the oppressive, heavy darkness. The heat, the humidity, it's suffocating. Like a blanket pressing against his skin, his nose, his mouth. 

Viktor knows the fire isn't real; he can still feel it licking at his heels, though.

A week or more, Viktor has been lying in this room. It's dark. Everyone is asleep. 

He sits up. He suppresses a groan. He's sore, all through his body and limbs. He doesn't want to wake Phichit. He doesn't want to be caught. 

He stands up. Phichit doesn't stir. 

He moves quickly and quietly-- silently- through the room, past the door, into the hall, and then he's home free. 

It's a long, winding kind of path, through the palace. Down the stairs in the dark and through the halls. From the very top, where Phichit has been to the bottom where they keep their knights in the bay, it's about fifteen minutes of quiet, careful walking. 

Viktor steps into the bay silently, and then it's hardly any thought at all to search through the dark to find the body of his armor. 

"Oh, Nadya," Viktor murmurs. Even in the darkness, he can see the new scars over her metal, the mud and wood splintered and blistered around her exterior hull. He reaches out with his free hand to brush the dust and dirt away from her, feels the slip of unfinished metal under his fingertips. "What did I do to you, beautiful?"

He pulls from around his neck the battery crystal and slips it into the receiving dock on her bent body, chest low to the ground. 

There's the low, mechanical sound of her coming back to life, and then her auxiliary lights glimmer on. Viktor squints for just a moment, to let his eyes adjust, and then he takes a deep breath, as steadying as he can make it. 

It's been too long since he worked with his hands, he supposes. 

There's a small storage cache at the base of Nadezhda's left food, a space that slides open, and there are kept all the tools Viktor could ever hope to need to repair her. It's brilliant design-- Nadezhda's an unusual model and tools sized and shaped to repair armor from the old city are uncommon. This way, he's never at the mercy of whatever local warlord or mayor or farmer might have. This way, if he's stranded out frozen on the highlands, he doesn't have to wait for Chris or JJ or Otabek or Phichit to realize he's been gone too long and come fetch him. This way, if he's sneaking out from his sickbed in the dark of the night, he can always find something to do with his hands. 

Viktor pulls out a pair of snips and a few wrenches and screws. He slides them into the generous pockets at the calves of his pants. This is easy enough. Climbing up to the access panel at Nadya's neck, to begin assessing the systemic damage to her artificial nerves, is not. 

Viktor looks at the shape of her and sighs. He wishes his collarbone were set, were healed. 

"Alright," he sighs, and he looks around the back of her to see if the climb up will be easier that way. 

He finds a foothold between the bent shape of her leg and hip, which has an alright hand hold up onto her side, and from there he can scrabble more or less onto her back. He lays there for a moment, stretched across the curved plane of her resting figure, sweating. 

He sits up, and then shuffles carefully up her back to sit with his legs draped over either side of Nadezhda's neck. Viktor looks up, from where he sits. About him, the night-thick darkness. In front of him, the low green light of Nadya's internal controls.

Viktor rolls his neck as much as he can, to get comfortable, and then he starts to work. 

It looks like there was a nerve outage from the chest outward, where he took the brunt of the cannonfire. The damage is spread across the nerve network, blunting sensitivity in the hands and shoulders. It looks like she'd run right now, but not terribly well. 

"Shit," Viktor murmurs. JJ wasn't lying. It's not great. 

He starts by opening the right upper shoulder panel, to track the frayed fibering. 

And then it's easy. Like slipping into a cool body of water-- it's the most automatic, easy, natural thing in the world. Viktor has a reel of replacement fibering in his pocket, and splints it into the system easily enough. There's dirt and cracked material as he goes. He wishes he'd had the foresight to grab a torch from the repair bench on the other side of the bay, but he can come back and weld that easily enough in the morning. Slowly, the speed of pale green light through the armor grows a little stronger and a little less cracked and frayed. 

Viktor is working, working, when a lit lantern suddenly comes into view, casting golden light and inky shadow all around. 

"Oh," Yuuri says, his voice clear an recognizable. "You're awake."

Viktor looks down, sees him holding the lantern up against the dark. His round face is hard to see, his brown eyes, his dark hair. Viktor wishes there were brighter bay lights here, like there were more than a year ago, at that village way out in the middle of the east. 

Viktor looks down at him. 

"Your grace," Viktor says. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"Please don't call me that, Viktor," Yuuri says, his voice tired. The lamp moves, wiggling a little before Yuuri removes a shutter on it and a round, full light is cast; a golden circle on the floor of the bay. Yuuri sits down on the floor, pulling his knees in close to his chest, arms wrapped over them. 

"I apologize, Yuuri," Viktor answers. He looks back down at the nerves. "I did not know you would be asleep here."

Viktor looks down, at Yuuri. 

He's a little easier to see now. His head, crooked to the side to look up at Viktor. 

"I should be asking you why you're awake," Yuuri says. "You're still healing."

"I'm not fragile," Viktor scoffs. He runs his hand through his hair, feeling the greasy kind of tug of it all. "Couldn't sleep. Nadya needs repairs and I’m the only one who can do it for her. No reason to just lay there idle and suffocate in the heat."

Yuuri huffs a short laugh. "It's awful," he says. 

"How do any of you get any rest?" Viktor asks. He slides the panel back into place and begins to screw it back in. 

"We're used to it, I guess," Yuuri murmurs. "We've been here long enough. And besides, it’s cooler here in the armory than most of the palace. Underground." 

"You amaze me," Viktor comments. "Truly." He turns, looks at the other shoulder. He sighs-- this is going to be a pain in the ass at this angle. "You have small hands-- Yuuri, come help me."

"I'm sorry?" Yuuri answers. 

" _ Yuuri _ ," Viktor sighs, stretching the first syllable of his name long in his mouth. "I injured myself in your service and you will not even come assist me, the craftsman and warrior in your employ, in the repair of my armor? O, my master, how cruel thou art!"

Yuuri huffs a laugh, barely loud enough for Viktor hear him. But he does. Viktor looks back down at Nadya, at the faint lights of the nerve system, and smiles. 

Yuuri gets up from the floor, and he clambers up Nadya easily, and soon enough has perched himself on her left shoulder, one leg draped over her back and the other over her chest. 

And suddenly, Yuuri is so close. 

Viktor swallows. "From this angle, I can't get to her repair panel. Can you-- there'll be...a divot? You can touch it and slide it."

There's a pause, as Yuuri reaches along the far panel, and then there's the shift and the lights of active nerves flicker back into the room. 

Yuuri looks at it, and he gasps softly. 

Viktor sees his hands reach out and carefully, reverently brush against the interior workings. 

"She's beautiful," Yuuri whispers. 

"She's ancient," Viktor replies. "The nerves are supposed to glow a solid color. She took some damage, though, and according to her repair schema, this is a site of heavy abuse."

"Mari never lets me repair Seito," Yuuri murmurs. "I have no idea what he looks like on the inside."

"Probably different," Viktor comments. He starts to triage out dead nerve fibers, setting them aside to help measure the new ones. "Nadya's an antique and looks and operates strangely. Same nerve material in all knights though, even if the schema is different."

Yuuri looks at her artificial nerves, at the delicate filaments of them, and then he looks up at Viktor and says, "I'm sorry I didn't protect both of you."

"You've already apologized for this, Yuuri, and you weren't even responsible," Viktor answers. 

Yuuri looks down at the repair schema, the light casting upward onto his features. "You were so hurt when you first woke up. I didn't know if you remembered," he murmurs. "Phichit says that hitting your head can do that. Can make you strange and forgetful." 

"How long did I-- how long did you--" Viktor loses the words for what he means. 

"Phichit is a good healer," Yuuri says. "I still...I was scared." 

Viktor's fingers itch to reach out, to drag across Yuuri's jaw and neck and chest. 

"It's not your fault," Viktor says. "You didn't send the scout or the berserker. You aren't the empire. You didn't start the war."

Yuuri shakes his head, shadow moving over and across him. "I failed in my practice as oracle. I failed in my duty as the duke."

"You aren't responsible for the whole world, Yuuri," Viktor answers. "It is my job and Nadya's job to protect you and your people from the empire. This is why you are paying me. I am good at this work, and this is why you are paying me well."

Viktor looks at Yuuri, at the heavy bow of his shoulders. 

"You didn't fail me. You didn't fail your people," he adds.

“I know you talked to Mari after we sparred,” Yuuri says. “I’m not-- I’m not stupid. I know you have questions.”

Viktor freezes. Unsure.

“Please,” he says. “Just ask them already. Everything has been so different. Everyone has been so different. I don’t know what I’ll do if you treat me the same way.”

Viktor looks from the open panel to Yuuri, lit lowly in the dark. 

“Why can’t you take armor?” He asks.

Yuuri looks down. Away. 

“The gods can take me at any time,” he says. “It’s easiest, when I’m dancing and the boundary between us is thin. But-- but it can happen anywhere. Whenever they please. It’s rare. It’s never happened to me. But it’s still dangerous. More dangerous than Minako likes.”

Yuuri takes a deep breath. The sound is soft in the armory, this close. In the dark.

“I can’t take armor because I’m an oracle, and I’m not even good enough to protect you,” he whispers.

“You talk to gods, Yuuri,” Viktor laughs. It feels hollow in his throat. “I think you are terribly impressive.”

“Viktor, _ please _ ,” Yuuri says. He sounds tired and sad and small. 

Viktor stops. He wishes he knew what to say. What to give Yuuri in this moment. He’d give Yuuri anything, if he only knew what it was.

“I thought,” Yuuri says, taking a deep breath, “I thought...I don’t know what I thought. I wish I knew how to tell everyone to treat me the way they've always treated me. They won’t even let me into the fields now.”

Viktor looks at him. He realizes-- his glasses are off.

“I wish I weren't the duke,” Yuuri murmurs. “I wish that I saw you every day, like I used to."

Viktor blinks, surprised. 

"You can still see me, Yuuri," Viktor says. "You have only to call my name and I will run to you." He fiddles with the reel of replacement nerve filament. He remembers dancing to balalaika music. He remembers the look on Yuuri's face, watching him. The giddy joy held tenuously between both of them. 

"This collar, around your neck," Viktor asks, him, looking at him. "What is this?"

Yuuri reaches up, touches it. "Boars," Yuuri murmurs. "They're our herald. For many generations, our family has named itself for the boars that ran wild in our forests. We're-- we're prosperous. And brave. And bold. And daring and...and jealous of what we hold dear. We're boars. These are the boar's tusks. My great, great, great, great grandmother killed the boar herself, but not before the boar gored her, with his mighty tusks. An honorable creature, that protected his woods. Mama told me...she told me our ancestor knew we would survive if we were as proud and daring. We don't wear a crown. We wear the boar that nearly killed us, to remember to be as sharp and fearless as him." Yuuri swallows, the muscles in his neck pulling around the sharp tusks, set in polished bronze. 

"It makes me wish I had a longer neck," Yuuri murmurs, almost laughing.

"What am I to you, Yuuri?" Viktor asks. 

Yuuri sits up a little straighter. He looks confused, owlish. 

"Am I your citizen or your servant or your knight?" He plunges forward, unstoppable. "Am I your lover, maybe?"

"You're Viktor," Yuuri answers, without a moment's thought or hesitation. "You're-- you're Viktor."

He can't figure out if that's an answer or not. He looks at Yuuri, into his eyes. 

"You don't have to be any of those things. Just...just be Viktor," Yuuri says. 

Viktor wishes he were closer to him. He wishes he were brave enough, to lean forward and kiss him. Viktor wishes Yuuri would lean forward and kiss him. 

Instead, a short decides to pop and sputter inside of Nadya's shoulder, which startles Yuuri. Viktor lunges forward to keep Yuuri from slipping off of Nadezhda. He overextends himself, just a little, and then he's toppling head over ass down her back and crashing into the beaten dirt floor of the bay.

* * *

Yuuri sees Viktor fall off of Nadezhda, and he immediately slips off of her shoulder and clambers down to the floor. 

"Viktor!" He gasps. "Are you okay?"

Viktor grunts and gets up from the floor. "Happens all the time," he mutters. 

Yuuri wishes it were a little brighter, as he helps Viktor up from the floor. He feels forward, patting the jostled material of Viktor's sling, holding his arm away and down so he can heal. 

"Does the bay have lights?" Viktor asks. "I can't see anything."

Yuuri shakes his head. "I have more lanterns," he answers. "The palace is old-fashioned."

Viktor doesn't pull backward or away. For a moment, he is incredibly close to Yuuri. 

"There's a prisoner?" Viktor asks.

"He won't even tell us his name," Yuuri answers. "I would tell you, but I don't even know."

Viktor is silent for a moment, before he says, "Otabek almost killed me."

Yuuri wishes he could see Viktor better, instead of so shadowed by the anemic light of the lantern on the other side of the room. 

"He said he was once part of the empire," Yuuri says. 

"He was so thin," Viktor says. "And hurt. The first days he was with us, he lost his arm to septic fever. I couldn't kill him. None of us could." Viktor looks downward, studying something in the dark. "We couldn't even kill him after he killed my father."

Yuuri stills. Looks at Viktor, who is turned away from him. There's something in his hand-- a reel of nerve fiber that hasn't yet been connected to a power source. The glow is weak. 

"He was an unaccompanied scout. We found him while surveying for a farmer. He was injured. We were careless. He opened the cockpit, leapt out, and stabbed him. We didn't even say goodbye," Viktor says. His voice is very low. 

"I’ve killed before," he continues, thickly, after a moment. "Many times, and I've lived because I sought my survival more ardently and efficiently than those I was engaged in argument with. Yakov always told me--  _ You're a hired soldier, Vitya. You have no nation but your purse. _ " 

The lantern light stirs. A ripple of golden light flickers slowly over Viktor's face. "Otabek killed him. Otabek nearly killed me,  _ twice _ . Otabek nearly took from me the only thing I value more than my wealth. Still, I could not kill him, Yuuri. I couldn't then, and I can't now."

_ Have you ever killed a man? _

Yuuri looks at Viktor, in the dark. 

"I can't tell you if taking a prisoner was a good idea or a bad idea," Viktor murmurs. "Otabek is the only one we ever took. If he's ever captured by the empire again, he'll tell them he's been one for almost five years instead of suffering the consequences of being a willing traitor. He killed my father, and he nearly killed me twice, and he has proven one of the most reliable, trustworthy men I've ever known."

"Viktor," Yuuri mumbles. 

"The empire is a sickness," Viktor says. "One that makes boys killers and monsters out of all of us. Some people survive their sicknesses. I think Otabek did. I think you believe this prisoner might as well."

"How old was he?" Yuuri asks. 

"He didn't know," he says. "He thinks fourteen." There's a pause, as if Viktor has come up out of water to take a deep breath. "I hope you're right, for the record."

"But what if I'm wrong?" Yuuri whispers. 

"What if you kill him and you were right?" Viktor says, automatically. "I've tried my hardest, and a life cannot be untaken."

"They want me to be ready to kill," Yuuri says. "I don't think I'll ever be."

"I wish all dukes had your convictions," he answers, briskly. Viktor stands and limps back over to Nadya. 

"You can't go back up," Yuuri cries. "It's late and you're already injured."

"Are you going to kick me out?" Viktor asks. 

"That's beside the point," Yuuri responds. 

"Answer the question, my duke, are you going to kick me out of your room?"

"No," Yuuri answers. 

"Then help me repair Nadya," Viktor says. He hoists himself up, one armed, onto Nadezhda's foot and slides open a panel at her shin. "Let me show you how to rewire blunted nerves."

* * *

Viktor fiddles with the open panel for a moment, pulling a corded reel of artificial nerves out from the interstitial space between Nadya's components. He gnaws on his lip, looking at the sediment that's been collected there. 

He pulls his hair out of his face. He wishes he'd brought a ribbon down with him. 

Viktor hears Yuuri's footsteps quiet on the beaten dirt floor. He steps around from behind him, appearing faintly into his view. His hands, small and beautifully formed, reach for Viktor's. Wrap into his fingers. 

"Yuuri," Viktor whispers. 

Yuuri, smaller than him, pulls in close. Near to his body. Viktor hasn't bathed in nearly a week, just wiped the sweat away from himself. Viktor swallows, self conscious. His hair is greasy and tangled. His clothes are stiff against his body. He needs to shave. He's not beautiful or dashing. He's hurt and ugly and tired. So, so tired. 

It's at once terribly familiar and very new, kissing Yuuri in the bay. The smell of engine and oil and machinery-- the grit of dirt under his hands, the feeling of Nadya's metal surrounding him, enclosing him as recent on his skin as a bruise. The bay is dark, lit only by lanterns and the directed sodium glow of Nadya's nerve cables. Viktor, kissing Yuuri suddenly, remembers their first meeting, in the tavern. Viktor remembers dancing with him. Viktor remembers Yuuri dancing with nothing but the joy of his body. All these memories, they tangle Viktor as he kisses Yuuri. 

Or rather, as Yuuri kisses him.

Viktor feels the wrench slip from his fingers. Hears it clanging to the floor. He reaches out to settle his free hand on Yuuri's hips. They're soft, just a little give under his fingers. Viktor moans, his mouth open to Yuuri's urgent kiss. 

Yuuri pulls away. He looks up at Viktor, his brown eyes wide and sweet and sad. 

"This is a mistake," he whispers. 

The jewelry around Yuuri's neck is cruel. The ivory color of it glints in the darklight. 

Viktor looks at him, at his round face and how his eyes glance away from him. How he looks away. 

"Yuuri," he says, softly. "Yuuri, please." 

"This is a mistake," Yuuri says again, his voice barely louder but no steadier. "You'll leave, after we pay you and I'll have to do my duty."

"I won't," Viktor answers. "Whither thou wouldst have me, Yuuri, I would go."

"You'll leave me," Yuuri says. "And I'll have to remember, for my whole life, how happy you made me, and that I'll never see you again."

"I won't," Viktor repeats. "I won't leave you."

Viktor feels Yuuri's hands ball into fists, grabbing the material of his shirt. Viktor feels Yuuri tense and highly strung leaning against him. Viktor feels Yuuri's body hot against him as he surges forward and kisses him again. Viktor would swear he felt Yuuri's chest hiccup with sobs in the rushed breaths between their kisses. 

Viktor reaches forward with his free hand, to pull Yuuri even closer to him, to stumble backwards, pressing his bodyweight against the column of Nadya's leg. They lean there, Yuuri's mouth hot and heavy against Viktor's, his lips slipping over his own, his tongue lapping forward into him. Yuuri's breath presses on Viktor's skin, drawing the blood there to the surface. Yuuri wraps his arms around Viktor's neck, pressing against his broken bone. It hurts. Viktor stays there, frozen. Terrified that if he disturbs Yuuri, this spell between them will break. This thing he's craved from Yuuri since they first met will disappear like dew. 

Yuuri pulls away from him. Viktor sees his silhouette, barely, in the dark. 

"Can we  _ not _ fuck in the dirt?" Viktor blurts. 

Yuuri freezes, and-- 

And he laughs. Freely and calmly and happily, Yuuri laughs. 

"Okay," he says. "But we have to be quiet."

* * *

* * *

 

It's strange, sneaking from one side of the palace to the other, trying to stay completely silent, stifling his laughter and Viktor's. It's not anything Yuuri thinks he could have ever imagined. There's never been anyone in Hasetsu he could do this with. No one he could imagine trusting quite like this. 

Of course, it's also inconceivable because--

Well...

The door to the throne room slides open easily. Almost silently. There's no one in here. His mother and Mari have been sleeping in Minako's house. Technically, this throne room is Yuuri's quarters now, as the bedroom that would be his as duke is occupied by six other people. 

Yuuri slips inside and pulls Viktor in after him. It's pitch black. There are no lanterns. No nerve lights glowing like rivers painted on the air. No light leaking in from the night outside. Yuuri slides the door shut behind both of them. 

"Where are you?" Viktor asks to the darkness. 

Yuuri fumbles a match from his hand and lights the lantern near the door. Yuuri fiddles with it for just a moment, to let it throw some light, just enough that he can see. 

Viktor is beautiful. The lamplight catches itself in the hollows under his cheeks, the long, straight line of his nose. The way his long hair falls over an eye; his hair is tangled.  Either Viktor has been failing to brush it himself, or Phichit has done an abysmal job. 

"Yuuri?" Viktor asks him. "Yuuri, are you okay?"

Yuuri has a duty. Yuuri has a duty and the common sense that one day, Viktor will not return to him-- either because Yuuri's money has run out or because he will take a hit in his armor that he cannot survive. Yuuri knows they can never belong to each other. 

Yuuri knows these things, but he thinks he can return to his grieving in the morning. 

Yuuri kisses Viktor again. 

Viktor smells like sweat and engine oil and the peculiar, lightning scent of knight machinery. He smells like the herbs wrapped up with his arm in the sling. His hair falls into Yuuri's hand in a cool, heavy ribbon. Yuuri kisses him gently, standing up on the tips of his toes, Viktor's free hand presses, insinuates, into the space between the band of Yuuri's pants and the flesh of his back, just above his ass. 

Yuuri breaks away. He fidgets with the folded and tied edge of his pants, and when he finally manages to undo it all, his pants fall to the ground in a heap of wrinkled linen. 

He's knows Viktor has seen him naked. He's still nervous, completely bare in front of him. 

Viktor's hand rests on the air for just a moment, before he reaches back to grab Yuuri's ass and leans forward to kiss him again. 

"Yuuri," he moans. 

The lamplight is low. The room is dark. It feels strange. Yuuri's not sure how he ever thought of this, how he ever thought of loving someone. It never seemed real. It never seemed like something he could have, and something he could want. Yuuri, kissing Viktor with his hands clasped around his beautiful face, his chest pressing against Viktor's, his long, long hair brushing against Yuuri's skin. Yuuri kisses Viktor, in the dark, and decides that he can be selfish. For one night, he can be selfish. 

Yuuri runs his hands down Viktor's chest, stopping along the hitch of his shirtbuttons, his sling. Yuuri runs his hands back up, unbuttoning Viktor's shirt, pulling it away, down.

Viktor hisses. "Yuuri, wait!" He says. "Let me--" They pull away, and Viktor carefully fumbles with the shirt around his arm, around his neck. He pulls it off. Bare chested in the light. His body hair fine a silver, catching the light, catching the shadow. His body so well defined, so beautiful. The curve of his arms, his shoulders, his chest, his sides. Yuuri watches Viktor undress himself carefully, and he inventories, reflexively, every detail of Viktor's body that he can. 

Viktor looks back up at him. Yuuri sees his eyes flick from his hips to his shoulders, to his neck, to his mouth. Viktor licks his lip, tongue darting out just barely before his bottom lip is pulled in between his teeth. He looks at Yuuri's mouth, before his gaze flicks back up to Yuuri's eyes, guilty.

He can hear Viktor's breath in the room. The only other sound is the caress of the lantern flame along the glass of the lantern. Yuuri can hear Viktor inhale, as if about to ask something, but stop. Yuuri can hear Viktor exhale as a long, slow sigh. Yuuri thinks he can almost hear Viktor's heartbeat, as he steps forward, as he takes Yuuri with his available hand. Viktor pulls Yuuri close to him, and he kisses him, again. 

Once, many years ago, Yuuri kissed Yuuko. They were both young, Yuuri barely eleven. They had been swimming, in the high summer. They had been laughing all afternoon, and evening was finally coming, the air finally beginning to cool. Yuuri laying on the dock under the waning sun next to Yuuko, and Yuuko turning over, next to him, and asking easily and confidently if Yuuri would kiss her, for practice. 

For a long time, it was the only time Yuuri had ever kissed someone who wasn't his mother or Mari or Minako. The first time he had ever kissed someone on the mouth. Yuuri thought it would be the only kiss he would have until he was finally betrothed. 

This is different. 

Viktor is hungry against him, the way his teeth nip out to capture his lip, his cheek, his skin. The brush of his tongue and the song of his breath. Viktor is so much more than what Yuuri could have ever hoped for. 

"My duke," Viktor whispers. "Let me show you-- Yuuri, let me give you something, please."

It's hard to breathe, to find the words. Yuuri nods. 

Viktor pushes Yuuri backward, catching him into his hand and slowly bringing them both downward, onto the floor. The mat scratches against his back, rasps as Viktor draws his hand and fingers out from underneath Yuuri.

Viktor's eyes look dolorous and soft, as he gazes at Yuuri.  He leans down into him, kisses his neck hungrily, wetly. 

Yuuri's breath hitches. Viktor bites his neck. Sucks. Yuuri feels his voice. He can't hear it, but he can feel the way it wrenches out of him, past his deepest personal desire to remain absolutely silent. 

Viktor kisses his neck, and then he sits up and moves down, between Yuuri's legs, propping them up and parted. Viktor leans down, between Yuuri's legs, leaning against his good shoulder.

"Yuuri," Viktor murmurs. "Your grace, do you trust me?"

"Yes," Yuuri says, his voice raspy on the air. "With my life."

"Oh, Yuuri," Viktor whispers, his breath tickling against Yuuri's inner thigh. "I would die for you. You trusted me with your life long ago. This is your pleasure, and if I had my way, you would never trust anyone else with it."

Yuuri's hands scrabble for purchase on the woven surface of the floor. Viktor licks from the cleft of his ass to the inner curve of Yuuri's thigh. Nips his teeth just along the joining there; bites and sucks. The entirety of Yuuri's very life-- his universe-- narrows to the small circle where Viktor bites and sucks and pulls and kisses. Right there, where his thighs and hips meet, inside, before his ass. 

Viktor's hand reaches forward, grasps and kneads the flesh of Yuuri's ass. His grip is firm, bruising. Yuuri cries out. The feeling is so much, so strange and wild and wonderful. Yuuri feels Viktor's hand on his ass pull one cheek to the side and then--

"Viktor," Yuuri gasps. His hand finds Viktor's head, his fingers dangling rapidly in his hair. Yuuri pulls at his hair, Yuuri gasps for breath, Yuuri screams and stutters for purchase, for reason. 

Viktor runs his tongue, wide and flat, against Yuuri. Against him, and then into him. Viktor licks into him. Viktor licks into him. Viktor licks into Yuuri and Yuuri, outside him, around him, embracing him, 

screams and falls to pieces. 

Yuuri has one hand in Viktor's hair, one hand on the floor, and his cock hard and against his belly. 

Yuuri tries to catch his breath, feeling Viktor's mouth hot and wet against him. Viktor's head is a lapping, bobbing thing, barely visible beneath Yuuri, in the wavering lamplight. 

Viktor moves up Yuuri, licking from between his ass all the way up to the base of his balls. Viktor moves, licks the shaft of Yuuri's cock. Yuuri cries out. Startles, shaking, his leg kicking out involuntarily. 

"Ah, fuck," Viktor hisses, pulling away. Yuuri sits up suddenly, and sees Viktor laying on the floor, grimacing, holding his injured shoulder with his free hand. 

"Oh, shit," Yuuri hisses, sitting up and twisting over to see Viktor in the dark, to lay hands on him gently, to make sure he's okay. His shoulder, his chest. "Are you okay? I didn't-- I forgot. I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Viktor breathes, "I'm fine, it just caught me off guard. I'm fine, Yuuri. You don't have to fuss over me."

Yuuri finds himself, suddenly, sitting beside Viktor, with Viktor's face caught in his hands, his jaw firm under the edges of his palms, the barest beginning of facial hair scratching into his skin. Yuuri looks at him, at his blue eyes and the smear of his saliva around his mouth, streaking up to his cheek. Yuuri looks at the bird's nest of hair on top of his head,  falling tangled in locks onto his shoulders, around his ears. Sweaty still and flecked with oil and dirt from repairing his armor. Viktor, beautiful, who he holds like a star between his hands. 

"Please," Yuuri says. "Let me care for you."

He closes his eyes, to lean forward, to kiss Viktor slowly and softly on the mouth. Viktor sighs into it, going ever so slightly lax in Yuuri's grip. 

Yuuri knows it wasn't planned. It's not choreography, the way he's suddenly straddling Viktor's lap, naked. There's nothing as organized as dancing to the way Viktor rocks upward, to follow Yuuri surging up, following the long drag of Viktor's hand up and down his cock. To how they move together, rolling and rocking, Yuuri eventually letting go of Viktor's face to fumble with his fly, to pull his cock out from his pants, to hold both of them, the two of them, together. It is not dancing, because it is effortless in a way Yuuri never knew anything could be. Maybe it is not holy, maybe it is not miraculous or oracular, but it feels so significant, on top of Viktor, his name falling from his lips as fervently as a prayer. Yuuri knows, Yuuri knows, Yuuri knows. 

Yuuri knows the moment that Viktor goes still and gasping and open mouthed underneath him, that this is a god he will love more dearly than one that has given him more precious gifts. He feels Viktor's free hand go still against the small of his back, fingers spread wide and rigid. He feels his chest go still-- frozen and static, before his breath returns in tiny, repeating, bursting gasps. 

Yuuri follows Viktor soon afterward, into that blinding, floating, unreal space. He stops moving. He sits there, feeling his spine sag and curve downward, catching his breath, seed sticky on his fingers and tears hot on his face. 

He loves him. He's such a fool; he loves this man, this stranger here with him. Yuuri loves him. 

Yuuri loves him, and he knows that it's a mistake. 

He catches his breath. Viktor does too. 

He's tired. He's dirty and tired and drowsy and hot. The air is still. The lantern flickers, in the dark.

This is selfish. This is a mistake. 

Yuuri reaches heavy, drowsy, over to the lantern and extinguishes it. Falls asleep on the floor of the throne room, tangled naked in the arms of his knight.

* * *


	8. pollination

The light is low and thin and grey, and he aches, all over. Viktor blinks awake slowly, unevenly. His tongue feels like it's been glued to the roof of his mouth. His teeth are stale and gritty. He feels thick and unsteady and bad. He feels real bad. Viktor feels as bad as he felt when he was captured that one time. Viktor is actually unsure, given how he feels, whether or not he was captured. 

And then he remembers. 

Viktor sits up, or tries to, but his shoulder sings with unexpected pain and there's a heavy warmth weighing him down. Not a heavy warmth-- Yuuri. Yuuri is laying on top of him. Yuuri who he loves, and who he had sex with while covered in sweat and engine grease and whatever it is that Phichit puts in a healing poultice. 

Viktor wishes he'd at least been able to brush his hair. 

He swallows, moves his hand and involuntarily strokes down Yuuri's back in one long motion. His skin is soft and sweat-damp under his fingertips. 

Yuuri stirs on top of him. His breath catches slightly, and then he yawns and stretches. Viktor feels him, feels this. Feels the tension and release of his body and then the way he squirms, just so. He's indistinct in the low, grey light, all blurry curves and edges. Viktor wishes he had some water. 

Yuuri sits up, sitting forward with his forearms rest onto his knees. He rests there for a moment, before he turns. Viktor feels Yuuri's hand on his own chest, his own arm. 

Yuuri doesn't say anything, though. Viktor can't. He's not sure what he could say. This is new to him. Not sex or sex with his employer or power. That any of this could matter is new. That this could be precious and more than just letting off steam. 

In the low, shaded light Viktor can just see how the tusk collar fits around Yuuri's neck, shiny and polished and cruel. 

Of course, this is when the throne room door is thrown open. 

* * *

They have him in a different room, now. One with a window that opens to a view of flooded rice fields far below the stacked floors of the castle he's being held captive in. They have him in a different room, because Otabek, the one who used to be a soldier, told someone that Yuri didn't like the dark. They moved him, and now it's not dark in here. It is hot, though. 

The room is small. The mattress is still thin, still lays directly on the ground. There are still guards outside of his door, every hour of the day. He's brought water and food. 

Mostly, it's boring. Nothing to do but pace and sleep and watch the little figures of the people in the fields, bent over high stalks of grain. 

Yuri didn't think being a prisoner of war would be this boring. 

The sun comes up one morning, high and hot, and as soon as Yuri manages to blink awake, there's a thunderous knocking on the door to the room he is being kept in, and then Otabek bursts in with a knife drawn and a sharp, grim expression. 

"Where is he?" He demands. 

"Who?" Yuri spits back. 

Otabek looks at him, and then he looks at the room, and then he looks back at Yuri. 

"We will have words, soon," he says, and he re-sheathes his knife. Turns to the guards framing the door, turns to leave.

"How long will you keep me here?" Yuri blurts, suddenly. 

Otabek stops there. Looks over his shoulder, just enough for Yuri to see his grey, flinty eyes. 

"Until the war is over," he answers. He steps through door, which closes. 

And Yuri is alone again. 

* * *

Viktor sits in Phichit's quarters with a brush in his hand and a new bandage being rapidly tied around his other arm. It's a fight, to move around Phichit's vice-like grip around his shoulder to brush his hair. It's a nightmare, really. 

"I can't believe you fucking did this," Phichit murmurs. "We're going to have to put a guard at the door. I thought you'd been-- I thought you were--" He takes a deep breath. "And then they couldn't find the duke--"

"Yuuri," Viktor interrupts. "They couldn't find Yuuri."

Phichit's fingers go steely on Viktor, digging into his shoulder. "It wasn't Yuuri they were scared for, Viktor, they were scared you'd kidnapped their sovereign. Or that-- fuck, that kid they're keeping locked up down the hall had killed him."

Viktor takes a deep breath. "Phichit, I have made time with our employers before," he says. 

"None of them have ever been my best friend before," Phichit spits back. "I spent years here. I know Yuuri better than you know yourself. If you hurt him, I won't even try to make your death look accidental. I already told you this, Viktor-- I can't believe we have to have this conversation twice. I can't believe you did this."

"I love him," Viktor says, because it's true.

"No you don’t," Phichit says. 

“Yes, I  _ do _ , Phichit-- fuck!” He says, as Phichit pushes his head to the side to get a better angle on a knot. “I love him, okay? I love him and I want him to be happy. I want to make him happy. I want to--”

“Shut  _ up _ , Viktor!” Phichit hisses. “Shut up! Or did you forget that this is a job?”

Viktor looks at Phichit. At his panicky, dark eyes, ringed from lack of sleep. 

“What have we told each other, all these years?” Phichit says. “What have  _ you _ told our company? Every job is our last job. Every battle is our last battle.” He takes a deep breath. His hands are pulled into tight fists, beside himself. “What about when we have to bury you, Viktor? How do you think my best friend will handle that?”

Viktor looks away from Phichit, to look at the open chest full of vials and poultices and bandages on the small desk. The mortar left half full. The bottles uncapped. The papers strewn across the table.

"And if you get up in the middle of the night to do god knows what and fuck up your sling again,” Phichit mutters, reaching back out to adjust the bandage of Viktor’s sling, “I will let it heal crooked and you will never pilot that deathtrap again."

"Understood," Viktor murmurs.

There's a pause that's angry, acrid on the air. Phichit sits behind him still and quiet before he sighs. 

"Chris is pissed," he says. "So is JJ. I think Otabek is mostly glad his prisoner didn't kill you."

"He's Otabek's prisoner now?" Viktor asks. "Shit. I've been out of it too long. You have to let me out of this room."

"If it makes you feel better, I am sure you're going to be dragged somewhere by some kind of guard for accidentally kidnapping their sovereign."

"He found me, Phichit," Viktor murmurs. "I didn't kidnap him. I didn't even take him outside of the palace."

"Oh yeah," he answers, throwing his hands in the air. “I bet Minako will fucking believe you.” 

"Why didn't you brush my hair?" Viktor asks. The stiff boar's hair tears and pulls at the tangled mess. "When can I go bathe? I feel like a prisoner."

"I was worried you were going to get a brain fever and die at any moment," Phichit answers. "And you're such a notoriously patient healer."

It’s so prickly between them, suddenly. Viktor hates it. He knows it’s his fault.

Phichit takes a long breath. 

The door opens. Chris steps in.

He looks at Viktor for a long time, the silence between them uneasy and strange. 

"We couldn't find you anywhere," he eventually says. "And then they couldn't find Yuuri. I had to tell them your intentions were honorable. And then they found you, naked, with him."

"I didn't kidnap him," Viktor answers. 

"I know that," Chris says. "Do you think they'll believe you, though? Do you think they'll want to?"

"Did something happen while I was holed up here?" Viktor asks. "Do we have any reason to think that these people who have sheltered us and shown us nothing but hospitality thus far would change so dramatically?"

"They have our armor in their armory! They have our salary! They have an independent military force and a prisoner already! They aren't some hick warlord or backwood farmer! This is serious! This is actionable and severe! You put us in danger, Viktor! And what--" Chris runs his hands through his curly hair, lighter on top than at the roots. His green eyes are tired and scared. "What if he asks you to stay?" He looks Viktor, dead in the eye. "Where does your allegiance lie? To the company you lead? Or to the duke who's caught your fancy?"

"This is no choice," Viktor spits. "Would you ask JJ to choose between the company and Isabella?"

"He's here, isn't he?" Chris retorts. "Haven't you already ordered him to make that choice? Hasn't he already made it?"

"Chris, what do you want from me?" Viktor asks. "What could I tell you or give you that would satisfy you?"

"I don't know, Viktor!" Chris shouts. "I don't know! I know there was something between you before he took the crown and before the empire attacked. I know you knew each other before and I know you made time, or you tried to. But I thought-- I hoped-- that both of you would have enough sense to know that there are consequences. That the war is here. That you both have your duty."

The knife that hangs over Yuuri's head. Duty. 

"Christophe, I tire of duty," Viktor murmurs. "I long for love."

Phichit sighs, loudly. He looks exhausted, slumped in his chair. "Go take a fucking bath," he says. "While you can."

Viktor stands up from the chair. He's not wearing a shirt, his chest just covered by the tight bandages of his sling. He runs his free hand through his hair. It's greasy, but untangled now. He looks at Chris, standing in front of the door. 

Chris shifts, pivoting on his feet to make room for Viktor to slip through the doorway, down the hall, down the stairs, and to the lake to bathe. 

* * *

Yuuri sits in the kitchen, with Minako and his sister and a pair of guards. Minako's arms are crossed. Mari looks like she's barely suppressing laughter-- she's beet-red and tears have gathered at the corners of her eyes. She and Minako are both still wearing the clothes they sleep in. Minako's hair is falling out of her braid, framing her face in loose, expressive sort of waves. 

"I'm not disappointed," Minako says. "I guess I am...surprised?"

"You finally fuck the mercenary you've been making googoo eyes at all summer and it fucking sends the entire palace into a god damn panic," Mari says, laughing. "I'm fucking proud."

"Mari, this is serious--"

"Minako, this is hilarious," Mari interrupts. "Yuuri fucked a knight. Good for him. Tell us where you're going next time and maybe don't do it in the throne room."

Minako takes a deep breath. "Are you finished?" She says, glancing over at Yuuri's sister. 

"Sure," Mari answers. "I just want to make sure he knows we're proud before he knows we're disappointed."

Minako's eyes close. 

There's a silent moment, fraught, watching Minako's expression shift, her eyebrows twitching, her lips pursed. There's a moment, before Minako says, "I know you are young. It seems imprudent that a hired soldier should be your escort."

"Good god!" Mari exclaims. "Minako--"

"What happens if he should suddenly die in the execution of his assignment?" Minako presses on. "What happens if his assignment shifts? What happens should he take a job with a village or duchy that means us harm?"

Yuuri swallows. His throat is dry. There's a bowl of tea set before each of them, but Yuuri hates the idea of moving in front of them, of opening his mouth.

"He's hired," Minako says. "That means he can shift. If you are to have an escort of this nature, we must be the only ones capable of securing his attentions."

"He's not a whore," Mari says. "Yuuri doesn't have a concubine--"

"A concubine would be more reliable," Minako says. She picks up her tea and takes a sip. 

"It was one night," Yuuri finally says. "It won't happen again."

Minako nods. Mari looks between the two of them, her face folded into a grim expression. 

Yuuri stands up, painfully aware of his clothes from yesterday sitting crumpled on his body. "I am going to bathe," he says, "if you wish to send me with a retinue."

Minako rolls her eyes over the rim of her tea. She gestures dismissively with a wave of her hand. Yuuri hates it. 

He can't believe he got caught. 

Yuuri goes down the stairs, following his instinct more than his thought. He goes down the stairs a couple at a time and follows the back path out to the bathing area. He strips off his pants and shirt, tossing them over to a bush nearby.

Yuuri pauses with his hand over the collar around his neck. The ivory is body-temperature under his fingers.

He stands there, the mud beginning to well up from under his toes. He's not sure if he's supposed to take it off to bathe or not. 

Yuuri swallows. Eventually decides to just let it be. He steps into the water. 

It's still early in the morning. Early enough that the sunlight is still cool and the air is still a little dew-heavy. Dragonflies skirt down over the still surface of the water, leaving heavy, glassy ripples across the surface. It's early. No one is out and up yet. 

The water is cold on his skin. He feels his pores close shut against the water, chills run up his back. He sighs. 

Sweat and spit and spunk scrub off of him. He works quickly, quietly. 

"Oh," Yuuri hears, and he turns around in the water, and Viktor's standing there. 

Viktor. 

Yuuri turns back around immediately, covering his chest with his arms. 

"I'm sorry," Yuuri blurts. "I thought everyone was asleep."

Viktor doesn't laugh, but there is a ripple in this breath that reminds Yuuri of laughter. "We woke up at the same time, my duke," Viktor murmurs. 

Yuuri swallows. He turns around, and looks at Viktor. 

His sling is retied. His hair is combed and piled on top of his head. He looks flushed and disheveled. 

Viktor nods, looking at him. "I can-- I'll head back. I can wait," he says. 

"Fuck," Yuuri murmurs. He looks at the cool, glassy water. "I'm sorry."

Viktor doesn't say anything. 

"It was a mistake," Yuuri says. "We shouldn't have--"

"I would do it again," Viktor interrupts. "If it would only make you happy."

"You don't mean that," Yuuri says.

"Don't presume to know me so well," Viktor replies. 

A crane dips into the water a ways off from them. Pulls a fish from the lake and flies off, the creature squirming in its beak. 

"Do you really regret it?" Viktor asks. His voice sounds shy. 

Yuuri regrets that it has already made him look so foolish to the people who depend on him. He regrets that it's made Minako and Mari and his Mama's lives harder. He regrets that somehow, his closeness to Viktor will be a wedge between himself and everyone else he loves. He regrets that he didn't do it earlier, or that he didn't do it at all. 

Yuuri doesn't regret their kisses, though. Or the way his body fit against Viktor's so beautifully. He doesn't regret talking to him. He doesn't regret what he does know of Viktor. 

"Yes," Yuuri whispers, because he has to. Because he has to regret this; because this is no way this is a thing Yuuri can want, can have, can dream. Yuuri knows, intimately and terribly, that he has to do the right thing, even if it has to be torn out of him. 

Viktor looks at him for a long, long moment, before he turns around and leaves Yuuri standing there, in the lake. 

Yuuri turns away and washes himself off, before he climbs out of the water and ducks back into the bushes, to dress.

He's got his trousers on when a coterie of men in guard's armor walk down the path, with Otabek and the prisoner.

Yuuri stands there, hidden by the branches and the edges of the thicket. He watches them. 

The prisoner looks at the lake. He turns and looks at Otabek.

"You've brought me here to drown me," he says. 

Yuuri's hand dives toward the band of his trousers, where he usually keeps a knife. 

"No," Otabek says. "I’ve brought you here so you can bathe."

Yuuri relaxes. Takes a breath. 

"How do you know I won't make myself fucking drown?" The prisoner asks. 

"I don't," Otabek replies. "But I don't think you will. I think you want to live. If you wanted to die, you would have long ago."

"You left," the prisoner says. "Don't fucking pretend to know what it's like."

"Do you really want to stay?" Otabek answers. "I know you are stubborn, soldier, I would hate to learn you are so foolish."

"Turn around and let me bathe in peace," the prisoner commands. 

"How do I know you won't run?" Otabek counters. 

"If staying is having more sense than loyalty and you think I'm sensible, wouldn't you trust me stay in your custody as prisoner?"

Otabek pauses. He nods. 

He turns around. "Men," he says. 

Yuuri sees the guards freeze for a moment, before their helmeted heads nod and they turn. It's Nishigori and Minami. 

Yuuri stands there, looking at this boy, skinny and pale and dirty and hurt. 

He looks at the soldiers Yuuri himself leads trusting him, implicitly. 

The moment feels still as winter. 

Yuuri turns around, too. 

* * *

They turn around, even the one in the bushes who thinks he's hidden. 

Yuri stands there, at the shore of the lake, and weighs his options. 

He could drown himself, if he wanted to. He could die, and refuse being subjected to torture. He could run. He's not sure where he would go. 

He could bathe, though. He could bathe and stay here, in capture. 

It doesn't really feel like capture, though, with so much clear water to bathe in and more grain to eat than he's ever had in his life. 

Yuri stands there, looking out along the glassy surface of the water. The air stirs, the leaves on every tree and every stalk of grass whispering against it. There's birdsong. A crane, wings spread wide against the sky. It dives, along the surface of the water, leaving ripples in its wake. 

Yuri stands there and listens. 

"My name is Yuri," he says. "Yuri Plisetsky, citizen and soldier of the Imperial seat of Muskoiy."

He takes off his shirt. It peels off of his dirty, sweaty skin. The rows of its stitches unstick from his skin. He tosses it away. Pulls off the dirty trousers, too. 

Yuri wades slowly into the lake. 

The water is cold on his skin. The mud on the bottom of the lake wells up between his toes. He dives down, into the water and feels his hair float up around him. 

He comes back up. Pushes his ratty blonde hair out of his face and runs his hands over his skin. He scrubs at his arms and legs and chest. He gets himself as clean as he thinks he'll be, and then he steps out of the lake, naked and wet. 

He wishes he had a towel or a change of clothes or something. 

"Can I get a fucking set of clothes?" He demands.

"Otabek," a voice says from the forest. "We commend you for your efforts. Leave me with him."

Otabek's spin straightens, just barely, before his head nods. "Yes, my duke," he says. 

The guards stay. 

"Nishigori, Minami," the voice in the wood says. "Accompany my guest and I to the residence through the trees."

"You're going to march me naked through the woods?" Yuri barks. "After all that about not killing me, you're going to kill me?"

"I'm going to groom you," the voice in the woods answers. "You need clothes. Let me clothe you."

An arm emerges out from the bush. It's holding a large bath sheet. "Come here," he says.

Yuri steps forward, from between the guards and to the bushes. He takes the sheet and wraps it around himself, dry and secure and hidden from eyes. 

"Are you covered?" Yuuri asks. His name like his. His name different. 

Yuri nods. "Yes," he answers. 

Yuuri turns around. He's wet, too. His hair is pulled slick away from his face and his skin looks pale and damp. His eyes are red and puffy. So is his nose. 

"Follow me," he says, and he sets forward up a winding, wooded path. 

The trees and grass are high. The air is wet and rapidly heating. 

There's something around Yuuri's neck. Yuri catches himself trying to figure out what it might be, staring at it. It looks like bone. It curves strangely around his throat, almost like a threat. 

They walk down the path until they come to a small cottage. It's a low, wide building, with doors that slide to the side, a large tree with glossy green leaves to the side. 

Yuuri looks at the guards. "The entrance," he says. The guards both nod. 

Yuuri kneels low to open the door, and then he stands. He gestures, his palm open, for Yuri to step through. 

Yuri does. 

The room is cool and dark and quiet. The floor is flat and cold under his bare feet. Yuuri pauses, and looks at him. 

"Yuri," he says. "Yuri Plisetsky."

Yuri nods. 

"You are a soldier," Yuuri says. 

"Who are you?" Yuri asks. 

Yuuri looks away from him. His chest rises and falls. 

"I'm the duke," he says. 

Yuri looks at him. His clothes are shabby and he's unguarded, unadorned, unaccompanied--

"Are you fucking dense?" Yuri shouts. "You're a duke and you're here with an enemy prisoner, unarmed and unguarded and--"

"You are not an enemy prisoner, and I am not unarmed," Yuuri interrupts. "You are my guest, Yuri Plisetsky."

Yuri freezes. 

"I'm going to heat a basin to wash your feet and hair," Yuuri says, turning and opening a chest. "And then we're going to dress you."

* * *

Yuri Plisetsky, the boy, carefully stands with his back to Yuuri, while Yuuri rinses his hair. Yuuri has him standing in a basin to catch the rinse water, and also so they can scrub the dirt from his feet.

He's skinnier without his clothes on. Yuuri can see the raised knobs of his spine and the curve of his ribs around his sides. He's pale and bruised and scarred and rough. 

"When was the last time you cut your hair?" Yuuri asks him. The ends are tangled and greasy and thick. His hair is flat and waxy-- the symptoms of starvation written across his body in ugly script. 

Yuri shrugs. "I don't know," he says. 

"Can I cut it?" Yuuri asks. 

Yuri shrugs again. 

Yuuri wraps him again in a clean towel and he steps out of the basin. Yuuri presses him down and grabs a pair of shears from the chest. 

He cuts his hair as evenly as he can, until it falls just above his shoulders, about his face. 

The color is a pale, pale gold. Not silvery, like Viktor's, but still light. Yuuri combs his fingers through it, before he takes the boar-bristle brush and brushes it back, away from Yuri's face. Yuri sits up straight, his shoulders squared back, steady. Yuri is smaller than he is; slight and thin. Yuuri has to go deep into the chest, underneath years of folded clothes and possessions to find something that would fit him. Linen trousers and a finely woven shirt. Yuuri places them before him. 

Yuri looks at them, and then at him. 

"What after?" he asks. 

Yuuri stands there, still. Unsure. 

"After I get dressed, what happens?" He says, as if trying to make himself more clear. "What happens to me? So you're not going to kill me, so I'm not your prisoner anymore-- what are you going to do with me?"

Yuuri wishes he knew.

"Feed you, for one," he says. "I have some questions I hope you'd answer. There's plenty of work for us all to do here. Maybe you could help Viktor and his company train the guards."

Yuri looks at the clothes, and then he looks up at Yuuri. 

"I've killed men before," he says. "I've killed men like this Viktor and his company. Do you think they would forgive me, your grace, or do you think they would kill me where I stood for what I had done to their brothers?"

"Could you forgive them?" Yuuri asks, because, well, could he?

"I barely knew Vanya; I didn't love him," Yuri answers. "They all beat me. We were soldiers."

"Vanya?" Yuuri asks.

"The one they killed. The high-impact unit, with the canon," he says. "He was a brute. They all are. We all are. We're not trained to be anything else."

_ Oh _ .

"What would you like to be?" Yuuri asks. 

Yuri's eyes are glass green and clear when he looks up at him, and the air in the room is still and heavy and expectant. 

"Beautiful," Yuri answers, his voice certain and sure.

Yuuri thinks he hears the rush and flutter of wings, for just a moment. 

The air turns waiting. 

* * *


	9. growth (one)

Viktor is such a fucking fool. 

Viktor walks away from the lake, and suddenly he wishes he were back on the steppe; back in that wild nowhere that was so oppressively private. He wishes he had someone to go, somewhere silent and empty. 

Viktor wishes he hadn't danced with him in the tavern. He wishes he hadn't seen him bathing, he wishes he hadn't sparred with him, he wishes he hadn't seen him dance, he wishes he'd never come here. He wishes he'd never been so fucking foolish. Viktor wishes he'd never met Yuuri. He wishes he'd never learned that his life was lonely and empty, only to have to go back to the way it was. He wishes he'd never loved Yuuri. He wishes he didn't have a heart at all. 

Viktor walks away from the lake, and he lets his feet carry him down and away, back into the dark bay where Nadya waits for him, still broken, still waiting to be brought back to life. 

Viktor stands in front of her, still unbathed, his sling tied more tightly. He looks at her. He looks at his life.

Viktor fiddles with the reel of nerve fiber in his pocket. 

Viktor looks at his life, and he feels so empty. 

* * *

Yuuri looks at Yuri, standing in front of him, cleaned and dressed. 

Yuri Plisetsky has gold-blond hair that is light, the color of rice-straw. His eyes are bright green and clear; they remind Yuuri of Viktor's, but different. He has clear skin and absolutely no fat on his boney frame. He stands shorter than Yuuri, by a good amount. He's young. Barely out of boyhood. 

Yuuri's clothes fit him strangely-- loose in places they were never loose for Yuuri, seams falling oddly on his shoulders, his chest. Yuuri makes a note to tailor them for him, when they have the time. When they know each other better. When Yuuri has convinced everyone to trust him, the way Yuuri knows they all must. 

Yuri's stomach growls loudly in the room. 

"Come with me to the kitchens," Yuuri says. "If Minako's not here, she'll be there."

"Is this 'Minako' your duchess?" Yuri asks him. 

Yuuri shakes his head. "Absolutely not," he says. "She's our--" He stops there, for a moment. For a long time, she was their oracle. For most of his life. She was their oracle, a natural part of their court, but then Yuuri became oracle, and then he became duke and now he's not sure what anyone is. "She is a teacher," he says, eventually.

There's an expectant sort of silence between them, as Yuuri slides the door open. Yuri looks at the opening, puzzled, before he says, "You are the duke."

"Prisoners would do well to remember that when addressing his grace," Nishigori says, from just beyond the threshold. 

Yuuri takes a deep breath. "Please just come through the door, Yuri," he says. "Please."

"You are above me," Yuri says, still standing there. "You are the duke. I am at your mercy, a stranger in your court, and I have to beg you to behave yourself."

"It's my court," Yuuri answers. "We'll behave as we like. Come through the damn door."

Yuri looks at the threshold for a moment before he steps through. "You are a ridiculous man," he says. 

"So I'm told," Yuuri replies. 

Yuuri walks down to the palace and through to the kitchens. Yuri is just a step behind him, and then Nishigori and Minami a step behind him. It's quite the entourage they cut-- Yuuri in the boar's tusk collar, Yuri the stranger, and the two men in armor. He knows they look strange, and it's only reinforced by the second glances he gets from the people they pass, or the strange kind of silence that falls as they go by. 

And sure enough, they step into the kitchen and Minako is there, shaving a radish with a knife into a long, wide, paper-thin strip. 

"Minako," Yuuri says. "I need to ask you something."

Minako looks up from her radish, and looks from Yuuri to Yuri to the guards to Yuri and then back at Yuuri. She puts the knife and radish down. 

"Yuuri, what is this?" She asks. 

Yuuri turns, to look at Yuri behind him. 

"This is our guest," he says. "Yuri Plisetsky."

Minako has the sharpest, cleverest eyes of anyone Yuuri has ever known. She looks between them like a magpie, expression severe and clever, before she nods. "Our guest," she says. "Let me prepare us some tea."

She pulls the kettle from the fire and gingerly pours water into three bowls of tea. She covers them, to steep, and then looks up at them. They are seated around the table, her posture drawn tall and straight. Yuuri mirrors her, reflexively. Always a student of her training, of her insistence. 

"Yuri Plisetsky," Minako says, as if tasting his name on her tongue. "You are from Muscoiy, yes?"

Yuri looks at her, his expression sharp and stony. "The fuck should you care?" He asks.

"Mmm," Minako muses. "All the way at the top of the world. No wonder you are so thin and prickly. Has Yuuri brought you to me in the hope that I will make you nice and fat and docile?"

Yuri's face twists with disgust. "I do not know why your duke has brought me here. I do not know why he does anything. I was told you would kill me on sight. I guess I was born under bad stars to be so unlucky that I would receive tortures as exquisite as a duke who does not know his etiquette and an old woman who poses insults as questions."

Minako smiles, but Yuuri knows her well enough to know that this is a threat.

"I have made no promises to neither hurt nor kill you, Yuri Plisetsky," she answers. "I would be careful with your insults."

"No one is to hurt or kill our guest," Yuuri interrupts. "Although maybe this would be easier to guarantee if both of you would stop baiting each other."

"Yuuri, why have you brought him here?" She asks. 

"Minako, how old were students at the academy? When did they start?" Yuuri asks. 

Yuri's eyebrows twitch downward. "The academy?" He demands. He turns to Minako, assessing her. "Are you a general?"

Yuuri shakes his head. "No, not-- not for soldiers. You said you wanted to be beautiful. I think Minako could show you."

Minako freezes, looking into a middle distance, not quite meeting Yuuri's eyes. She goes still, before she looks up, her hands pressed palm-down into the wooden table. "Yuuri, are you fucking out of your mind?" She asks.

"He is your duke," Yuri spits. He looks at Yuuri. "Why do you tolerate such insubordination, and why do you insist on cultivating it within me?" 

"This duke may be calling you a guest, but I know you are an imperial, born motherless and servant of a criminal, murderous madman who smashed the world to see how it was held together," Minako growls, in answer. Her gaze is frigid and unbreakable on Yuri, her face scowling. "He may be duke, but he cannot order me to teach our enemies the sacral rites of our home."

"You want me to become a priest?" Yuri asks, still looking at Yuuri, panic hitching his voice. 

"Minako isn't a priest, she's an oracle," Yuuri says. "She--"

"She's a witch?" Yuri barks, and the color drains out of his face, leaving him somehow paler, somehow thinner, somehow smaller. "You brought me to see a witch and you want me to sell myself to devils? You think this is a better choice than death?"

"We hold the old ways, the sacred ways, the ways of the true kingdom before the advent of your empire!" Minako shouts. 

"That is enough!" Yuuri shouts, finally, finally angry enough to break the terrified silence that befell him. "Minako, I am duke, which means that we are left without an oracle once you retire. Yuri is young and his eyes are new to us-- who knows how he might see and feel what will be." He turns, to look at Yuri. "We are no witches and we do not trade in devils, Yuri, why would you ever think such a thing?"

It happens almost instantly, how Yuri reaches out and grabs a bowl of tea, flings it out and away to crash against the wall of the kitchen. He looks at Yuuri with his teeth bared, his eyes flashing. "The empire burned the covens," he growls. "And those who would not renounce witchcraft with them." He stands, suddenly, and looks at both of them. "If I am no prisoner, then am I free to leave your presence?"

Yuuri looks at him, shocked. A boy, wearing his clothes. A boy with heavy, hideous lies on his heart, on his tongue. 

He nods, weakly, and Yuri steps away from the table, and leaves. 

Yuuri doesn't know where he goes. He can't summon the wherewithal to follow him. 

"You have a pet," Minako comments, looking at the broken ceramic on the floor. 

"He's a child," Yuuri says. "He's a child and you said the academy would take--"

"They took orphans, Yuuri, and they started training from birth, as you did!" Minako cries. "It would be foolish to try to teach him what he cannot know and what he insists on blaspheming!" She takes a deep breath. "I respect your decision to let him live. I do not understand it, but I know it is your authority to exercise as you see fit. I cannot be a teacher to him. It is impossible"

"He said he wanted to be beautiful," Yuuri says. 

"Then teach him to be that, yourself. But do not ask me to teach him faith he cannot understand," she answers, and she stands, and goes back to cutting the radish. 

* * *

Yuri storms out of the kitchen, and he's not sure where he means to go, or where he's supposed to go, but he just leaves. 

Witches. They told him they would torture him, that they would kill him, that he would pray for the mercy of a soldier's easy, honorable death. Yuri remembers the commandant pacing before the untidy lines of cadets like him, all of them different heights, all of them skinny enough their joints poked out at all angles. 

They didn't tell him that the witches would still be alive, or that they would be here, or that they would try to take him in, under their wing, into the sanctuary of devils. 

Yuri walks away, anywhere else, and he keeps walking. 

He's back outside, before he knows it. He realizes, soon enough, that this is the view from out of the window. There's the flooded fields and the people tending to them. He stands there and looks at them. 

"Oh," someone says, behind him. "Are you with Knight Feltsman's company?"

Yuri turns around, and there stands behind him a plump woman with a round, sweet face. She's not old-- she doesn't look like a husk the way old women in Muscoiy did-- but she's not quite young, either. She smiles up at him. 

"Are you looking for something to do?" She asks. 

Yuri looks at her, and he takes a deep breath and nods. 

She takes his hand gently into her own and pulls him away from the flooded fields and over to a courtyard, where a young woman is sitting in the dirt, braiding straw. Three children-- triplets-- scuffle in the dirt around her, shrieking and laughing. 

It keeps catching Yuri's eye. How round these children are, as they tear at each others' hair and laugh and scream. How soft and round the woman's hand is, In his own. How the woman braiding straw has fat in her cheeks, and the way her eyes are bright and clear. 

"Ah, Hiroko," she says. "Perfect timing-- I can't get this to lie flat. Can I borrow your hands?"

The round woman chuckles. "Of course," she answers. "Maybe our friend can help us, too?"

"Oh, hi!" The woman in the straw says, looking over to him. "You must be with Viktor! I'm Nishigori Yuuko. Do you know how to work straw? I'm trying to make some new baskets but getting the base started is always such a nightmare."

Yuri shakes his head. 

"Well," the round woman ( _ Hiroko _ , he thinks,  _ her name is Hiroko _ ) says, "you're never too old to learn!" She tugs him downward and hands him a bundle of straw, before pulling a few of her own together. 

"What's your name?" One of the children asks him, voice sharp and piercing. 

"Axel!" Yuuko hisses. "Be polite!"

"He has to tell us, those are the rules!" another kid shouts, voice piercing and high. 

"Tiger," Yuri answers. 

" _ Tiger!? _ " All three of the children scream at once.

Yuri nods. 

The three look at him, shocked.

They turn back to each other, screaming and shouting and tussling. Yuri looks back at his straw. 

"So the trick to starting a basket is keeping the straw absolutely flat and to stay calm," Hiroko says next to him. 

Yuri gathers the bundles into his hands and begins to manipulate them, trying to copy what Yuuko and Hiroko are doing next to him. It's difficult, getting the straw to move under and over, to curve gently enough to not quite snap. He watches, gritting his teeth, and weaves carefully, as quickly as he can. 

Yuri doesn't say anything as Otabek approaches from the other side of the courtyard and sits down next to him, in the dirt. Yuri doesn't look up, and Otabek doesn't look at him. He nods to Yuuko and Hiroko and they both smile back. The three of them work silently, and Otabek sits there, his leg propped up, his arm draped over his knee. He looks forward, outward. 

The children shriek and scream as they tussle in the dirt, and one cry is just piercing enough that Yuri's concentration snaps, and he breaks a bundle of straw gathered in his fist. He freezes, looking at it. 

"Can you spar?" Otabek asks him, his voice neutral. 

Yuri looks at the straw in his hand. He realizes his body is buzzing. 

He nods. 

Otabek gets up from the dirt, brushing the dust away from his trousers. He offers Yuri a hand, and hauls him up. 

Otabek walks away, and Yuri follows him. 

* * *

Viktor doesn't pull himself back up onto Nadya's shoulders, but he does find himself sitting with his legs straddling her broad foot. He looks into the access panel on her shin and frowns. He has a reel of nerve fiber in his lap and some tools spread out on the ground, just within reach. He's strung and restrung from her ankle up all morning now, and he still can't get her to light up. If the break isn't here, it's higher up into her hips, and that's going to require actually crawling into her, which he's never been fond of even when he has both of his arms at his disposal. 

He really hopes the break isn't higher up. 

Viktor sighs and runs his hand through his hair. He still needs to bathe, but the idea of going back to the water-- the idea of talking to anyone right now, much less Yuuri is more than he can bear. 

Viktor grabs a wrench; he thinks maybe the issue might be a circulatory line deeper into the calf, when he hears someone behind him. 

"Not right now," Viktor says. "I'm busy."

"You're missing a hand, don't be stubborn," JJ says in response. 

Viktor looks away from his armor and JJ is standing there, a screwdriver extended. 

"So I suppose now you've come to scold me," Viktor murmurs. 

JJ shrugs. 

"Fantastic," Viktor mutters. 

JJ doesn't say anything. It's strange. He's usually the first to say something. 

Viktor leans back into Nadya's shin. "Can you hand me plastape?" He asks. A moment later, JJ's hand is there, with a roll of black tape to offer him. Viktor grunts his thanks. He wraps a part of the circ line a few times, covering the part that's gone gray with oxidation. 

Viktor grabs a debris brush from his lap and dusts up the line a little bit more. There it is. He keeps wrapping upward. The patch is inelegant, but it should hold. 

"When you met Isabella," Viktor comments, "what was it like?"

There's a careful silence. 

"It was like the world turned for the first time," JJ answers, after a moment. "And I knew I'd do anything for her."

Viktor leans out of the panel. "Spotlight," he murmurs, and JJ hands him a small light to peer a little more closely into the darkness inside. 

"I would," JJ comments, after a moment. "I'd do anything for her. The moment she asks me to leave the company, I'm gone. You know that, right?"

Viktor grunts.

"Isabella's not-- she's not a duke," he continues. "But her father is a fine farmer. They've lived on the same land since the Age of Princes. He doesn't think much of me. But I don't mind, and I don't think Isabella does either." JJ hands him a knife. "I don't think you're asking because you want to know about me and Isabella."

"If you aren't here to scold me, why are you here?" Viktor says. 

"I know Chris and Phichit already let you have it," he answers. "But considering you aren't walking on air right now and you're not down here making time with him, you probably don't need scolding; you need a friend."

"He told me it was a mistake," Viktor says, maybe a little more harshly than he means to. Maybe a little angrier than he means to. He takes a breath, trying to pull all the air into himself, to keep himself here, instead of in himself. "He told me it was a mistake. He changed me, and he said he regretted it."

JJ whistles. "Fuck," he says. "I'd be low, too."

Viktor laughs, humorlessly. "I want to leave. I wish I could be anywhere else or anyone else. I wish we could be someone else, and he didn't regret it. I wish I was someone else and I didn't love him."

"You've never had heartbreak before," JJ answers, like this is somehow simple. 

"And you have?" Viktor spits, hauling himself out of Nadya's leg, looking up at him, suddenly furious. "You think you know my pain?"

JJ shakes his head, calmly. "Not your pain," he says. "But a similar one." He looks away from Viktor, and his hair falls forward, into his eyes. He looks well-kept and clean, every inch the romantic hero he imagines himself to be. "It takes time to feel better," he says. 

Viktor turns back to the open panel on Nadya's shin. 

"I don't know what the fuck I'm doing," Viktor murmurs. 

"We should see about whiskey," JJ replies.

* * *

* * *

Yuri follows Otabek away from the courtyard and through a set of doors, over a hall and to a deeper, inner courtyard. It's empty and silent, the ground even, beaten dirt. Yuri looks around. There are no weapons and nothing that could be improvised into a weapon. Hand-to-hand. Fist-to-fist. 

Yuri nods. 

Fighting in his body and not in the armor is different. It's not just riskier, it's that his vulnerabilities are different and his senses are used so differently. It's raw, this close to the surface of his skin. He prefers it. It's easier to control. 

"Three rounds," Otabek says. "Loser is the first to hit dirt."

Yuri nods. 

"No teeth, no hair," Otabek continues. "No sucker punches. This is clean."

"Did they make you soft here?" Yuri spits. "The barracks let us--"

"This isn't the barracks," Otabek interrupts. "No teeth, no hair, no sucker punches."

Yuri huffs a quick sigh, before he nods, briskly.

The air is heavy and hot. The sun is huge in the cloudless, blue sky. 

Otabek nods back. He pulls a length of material out of a pocket and tosses it to Yuri. He pulls out another. Yuri watches him carefully bandage his fist, using his only hand and his teeth. He works methodically. 

Yuri looks at the bandage for a moment, before tossing it back to Otabek. 

"You'll regret that," Otabek says. 

Yuri shrugs. "Sure," he answers. 

Otabek looks at him and then he pulls himself into stance. He draws his right foot back behind himself, resting his weight across both his feet. He bends low into his knees, ready to spring. He raises his fist, slowly, deliberately. His expression falls serious and calm. 

Yuri raises his own fists, ready. Sweat rolls down his back. He wishes it were shaded here; he suspects he's going to walk away from this sunburned. 

Otabek moves like water. There are no pauses or stutters to his motion; it comes as easily to him as breathing. 

Yuri reaches for him, open-palmed, and Otabek pulls backward, slipping just out of his grasp. Yuri moves forward as Otabek reaches with his fist. Yuri grabs his hand, pulls Otabek forward, into his space. 

Otabek's eyes follow Yuri, watch him intently as Yuri pulls him off of his balance and down into the dirt. 

Otabek springs back up, lightly. 

"That's one," he murmurs. 

Otabek moves quickly, fluidly. Nothing snaps or jerks; each motion falls smoothly from one into the next. He rolls Yuri's hands away and steps back from him all as one motion. He pivots away from Yuri and strikes at his side with the next. The strike is firm and hard, enough to knock the air out of Yuri's lungs. He stays upright, though, and turns immediately to face him again. 

"You're sturdy," he says. "Aggressive. They went after you."

"I'm little," Yuri spits back. He slides forward, into space, to punch Otabek squarely in the belly. He's close enough he can hear him gasp slightly with the strike. Yuri pushes against his shoulder, knocking him into the dirt. 

"Two," Yuri says. 

The insects scream in the woods, rasping and shaking. It's hot enough that the air around the ceramic tiles on the roof wobbles drunkenly. 

"Did they take your arm?" Yuri asks him. "Is that how the empire forged you?"

Otabek jumps back up, still hurting and strong with indefatigable energy. He raises his hand once more. 

Yuri frowns. 

"Three rounds," Otabek says.

Yuri nods.

"I lost my arm to septic fever," Otabek says. "I had a wound. It festered. Phichit, the healer in my company, took my arm from me. It saved my life." 

Otabek pulls him back, deeper and deeper, weaving away from his blows and his grasp. His balance is uncanny-- Yuri tries to knock him back and backwards, but he stays up, pulling him back. 

"I think of it as a metaphor," he says. His voice is steady and low. His accent is different from his own. "We cut the empire away. And who I am is wounded, but stronger than the infection that bore me into being."

He dances backward, and Yuri follows him, until suddenly he turns and loops his arm around his waist and carefully levers him into the dirt.

Yuri lies there for a moment, taking a deep breath. 

"They're witches," he says, finally. "This duke and his advisor, they're both fucking witches. Did you know this?"

Otabek offers him a hand, and Yuri takes it, standing back up. "They are no worse than the priests," Otabek answers. "And their god doesn't ask them for blood or conquest. I trust them."

"They're fucking witches," Yuri hisses again. "They wanted me to join them."

"You'd be prudent to take their offer," Otabek says. "They're effective."

"I can't sell myself to a demon," he counters. They step into the colonnade and out of the harsh sunlight. "They're witches! The empire burned the covens because they ate children and dealt with forces--"

"I think if Yuuri wanted to eat children, he would have killed you long before now," Otabek interrupts. 

"They're witches, and all the children are so round and cheerful and everyone is fat and smiling and no one has even beaten me," Yuri barks, plunging on. "It's nothing like home, it's nothing like they said it'd be." Yuri takes a deep breath. "It's nothing like fucking anything. I feel like I'm dying."

Otabek looks at him, seriously, for a moment. There's a heavy dusting of red dirt on his clothes and into his hair. He nods. "It's not like home," he says. "And home was terrible."

"Do they know what's coming?" Yuri demands. "Do they know that--" Yuri takes a deep breath. Something's caught inside of him, something that itches. He hates it. "I want-- they'll beg for mercy."

"They won't," Otabek answers. "That's why they hired us."

"They're soft," Yuri says. "They'll be crushed."

"They aren't," Otabek replies. "And they won't."

"We can't cut the poison out of me," Yuri says. It claws out of his throat. "I'm the poison."

"You're not," Otabek answers. 

"Don't fucking be nice to me," Yuri says, and he pushes Otabek. He shoves him with both of his arms, as hard as he can, but he doesn't budge. "Don't fucking-- why won't you beat me? Why won't they beat me? Why won't you kill me?"

Yuri wishes he knew what to do, or what to say. He wishes he knew what to do with this strange, guilty feeling in his stomach. He wishes he were someone else.

His throat feels torn with the volume of his voice. He feels like he might vomit. He feels like he might combust. 

Suddenly, the sky bursts, and rain begins to fall. 


	10. growth (two)

Yuuri stands at the doorway and watches, silently. 

Yuri spars with Otabek in the inner courtyard. As far as Yuuri can tell, they don't know they're watched and he's the only one watching. He thinks about turning back away and going to the kitchen. He doesn't though, and he stands there, half-hidden in the doorway, and watches Otabek methodically pull Yuri's attack style out. 

Otabek lures and dances and darts away from Yuri's blows. Yuri moves aggressively and opportunistically. He weaves and doges-- Yuuri wonders if he has training in dancing already. He's sturdy, too; he takes a blow from Otabek across the back and stays standing. 

When the third fight closes, Otabek looks dirtier but unbothered, and Yurio looks like he hasn't slept in weeks. Maybe he hasn’t. Maybe he hasn’t slept in years.

Yuuri studies both of them. 

Yuri is small and skinny, and he looks so overwhelmed and lost. He reminds Yuuri of a cornered dog, biting out at everything in his reach. He gestures widely with his arms and hands and his face grows dark and sharp as he talks to Otabek. And Otabek stands there before him, as impassive as a stone, still and unmoving.

Yuuri watches them, until he hears thunder roll and the sky bursts open and rain falls. 

He ducks back inside and heads back down the hall. He chews on his lip, thinking. 

He wishes he could make Minako see. 

The rain beats down on the roof and Yuuri doesn't pay attention to where he's going, he just goes, lost in thought, until he finds himself back in the throne room. 

The rain falls, a torrent. It rattles against the roof and makes the space different in a strange way. Not quite bigger, but fuller. Different. Its own kind of percussion, pulling intimate against all the shapes of the room. It crowds close to Yuuri, and he's caught by the feeling before dancing. He's not alone here. 

Yuuri stands in the room before he turns away, closing the door behind him. 

Yuuri walks back to the courtyard, but Otabek and Yuri are already gone. 

* * *

* * *

Viktor can't sleep, so he works on Nadya. He eats when JJ brings him meals. Viktor can't sleep, so he restrings Nadya's nerve fibers and flushes mud and dust out of her interstitial cavities and he buffs and sands dirt away from her hull and finish. Viktor patches padding in the cockpit and does his best to even out the blindspots in her visibility. Viktor works and works and works, and no one bothers him, and Yuuri especially doesn't bother him. 

Viktor can't sleep, but he does wake up, leaned up against Nadya's leg or laying in the dirt, a few times. Viktor can't sleep, but he does find himself suddenly shaking awake, his breath too fast in his chest. 

Viktor can't sleep, but he does dream.

Viktor can't sleep, and time passes around him, even though all he wants is for everything to go back to the way it was.


	11. fruiting

Yuuri hasn't danced since before the skirmish happened, since before so much changed. Yuuri hasn't danced since before he met Yuri, since before Viktor went off to fight, since before they had sex. Yuuri hasn't danced since he's had sex, ever. 

It’s been a strange week. It’s been lonesome in a way Yuuri’s never been before. Suddenly, he’s been exiled from his working life, and with it, his social life. Yuuko doesn’t talk to him-- it’s almost like she doesn’t know how, suddenly. Minako is severe and distant and disapproving in the way only she can truly be. And Yuuri loves his mother, but he finds with the boar-tusk collar around his neck, anything he might say to her feels strangled and strange.

Yuuri’s not sure where Viktor’s been. He hasn’t been back to the armory, since it happened-- he’s abandoned his chest and bedroll down there. He supposes he must still be there, repairing his armor. Licking his wounds after Yuuri--

It’s lonely and tense and weird.

Yuuri feels like screaming, which is why when Yuri approaches him one morning, early, and asks him to spar, he doesn’t say no.

Yuuri stretches. He weaves the fingers of his hands together and presses upward, stretching his spine and shoulders and back. He takes a deep breath and lets it loose, feeling the muscles of his chest tug and pull against each other. He stands up on his tiptoes, feels his calves and ankles pull and ache. He rolls forward then, slack, and exhales. Yuuri lets his eyes drift closed, brushes his fingertips over his toes. 

Yuuri hasn't danced in more than a week; it's longer since he's sparred. 

He rises up. Shakes his shoulders and rolls his neck. "Okay," he says.

It's dark in the throne room. The doors are closed. There are no windows, there are no lanterns lit. The light drifts from gaps in the roof, in the spaces between doors. It's low and grey and shadowy. Shapes are fuzzy and ill-defined. It's a strange time and place to do this, but Yuuri knows that if they want any kind of privacy, it's the only place to do this.

"Okay," Yuri says, in front of him. 

Yuri rushes him like a hellcat. One moment, he is yards away and the next Yuuri is blocking his staff and backing away, doing all he can to pivot away from him so he's not caught against the edge of the courtyard. Yuri moves all furious speed and strength; Yuuri barely has time to think, much less catch the end of Yuri's staff attempting to sweep his ankle. 

That's the first note that Yuuri makes. Yuri is quick. It's not about taking him out at the start; it's about outlasting him. 

They'll have to work on his stamina. 

Yuri's face is flat and serious, his brows drawn tight and sharp over his green eyes. He snarls as Yuuri not only blocks his staff coming at his side, but counters with his own blow, resting just above Yuri's ribs, ready to strike. 

"One," Yuuri says. 

"Hit me," Yuri spits back. 

They haven't talked much, since it happened. They haven't talked at all, until this morning when Yuri approached Yuuri in the kitchen holding the staves and demanding he fight him. 

And now they're here, in the throne room, staves in hand and fighting. 

"No," Yuuri answers. 

Yuri's expression twists angry, cruel for just a second, and his leg sweeps under Yuuri-- or it would, but Yuuri leaps up and out of the way of it. 

Yuri is quick. Yuuri is quicker.

Yuri darts forward, his staff tucked under his left arm, his right hand open to strike. He pulls in close to Yuuri, jostling into his personal space. 

"Your mercy isn't a favor," he hisses. He jabs into Yuuri's ribs. Yuuri feels the breath get knocked out of him. "You have to hit me. How else will I learn?"

"I don't want to hit you," Yuuri answers. He catches his breath and blocks Yuri's next strike. 

"Then why are you fighting me, dumbass?" Yuri spits. 

Yuuri huffs. He pulls back to take room to use his staff in. "Why did you ask me?" He replies. 

Yuri scowls. He rushes into Yuuri, staff forward.  _ This will bruise _ , Yuuri thinks, as he gets caught back across the ribs. 

"You won't beat me," he hisses. "You won't interrogate me. You won't kill me. You won't talk to me. Maybe you'll hit me if I hit you first."

"Why do you want me to hit you?" Yuuri asks. 

Yuri throws his staff on the ground and charges Yuuri. He runs across the floor and tackles him, throwing him to the floor. He sits on top of his chest, his fist raised. 

"I'm smaller than you," he says. "I'm smaller than you and weaker. You should beat me."

Yuuri shakes his head. "I'm not that man," he says. 

"I could kill you," Yuri says, sitting on top of him. 

"You couldn't," a voice says, from the other side of the room. 

Yuuri turns, looks over. 

Viktor stands in the doorway, in just a sliver of daylight eking in from the outside. He has a pistol in his hand, his blue eyes fixed on Yuri, sharp and cold. 

"Put that thing away!" Yuuri cries, wriggling out from underneath Yuri. "Put that away-- we're just sparing, Viktor! Don't-- don't hurt him!" Yuuri scrambles to put Yuri behind himself, to shield him. "Don't shoot him!"

Viktor looks at Yuuri. It’s the first time they've seen each other since it happened. In more than a week. Yuuri looks at him, at beautiful Viktor, dashing in his low-buttoned shirt and long, silver hair, brandishing a pistol in the doorway to Yuuri's palace. In the sliver of daylight he stands in, he practically glows.

It makes Yuuri's heart ache, how much he wants to reach out and hold him again. It scares him profoundly that he's ready to kill for him, even if that is what he's ultimately paying him for. 

Viktor's eyes are cold and hard as they slip away from Yuuri to look at Yuri. 

"You killed my comrade," Yuri spits. "Do you think I am afraid of you, a mercenary? A soldier with no cause and no country? A coward?"

"Yuri, stop!" Yuuri shouts, still looking forward at Viktor, still cold and angry and terrible. "I don't want him to kill you! I don't want you to die!"

"Do you trust him?" Viktor says, still looking past Yuuri. Still furious and cold eyed and angry. Still distant, because Yuuri made him be. 

"Yes," Yuuri answers. 

Viktor lowers his pistol slowly. Places it back into its holster and stalks out of the room, leaving the door open, letting light filter in.

_ Do you regret it? _

"He's jealous," Yuri says behind him. 

"You don't know what you're talking about," Yuuri replies. He turns back around, back into the grey room. 

"Everyone thinks that because I'm young or I'm small that I'm stupid or that I'm not looking," Yuri says. "He's angry you're spending time with me. What did you do to him?"

"That's private," Yuuri answers. 

"Did you fuck him?" Yuri needles. "Did you break his heart?"

"That's enough," Yuuri hisses. He feels his fists clench, instantly. "That is enough. You're trying to provoke a reaction in me, well, it worked. We're done here. I'm done here. Fight your shadows but don't goad me into hitting you because--" Yuuri takes a deep breath. "I don't know why you want me to hit you. But I'm not going to."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do," Yuri says after a long moment, standing there in the dark. "Or who you are. You let your people and advisors and mercenaries do anything. They don't defer to you or bow to you. You wear shabby clothes. Even your throne room is fucking shabby. Why don't any of you have any fucking lights? Why do you all piss outside. It's so fucking backward here it's painful."

Yuuri doesn't say anything. He just waits. 

After a moment, Yuri says quietly, "They told me you'd eat me. They told me that's what witches do."

Yuuri takes another deep breath. He lets it ground himself. 

"You're talented with your body," he says. "You move through space well and you're aware of your limbs. You could be a great dancer. You already move like someone who has trained. I had hoped, maybe, that you had."

_ You could be a great oracle. _

"I don't want to be a fucking witch," Yuri spits. 

"Do you know what it is I can do?" Yuuri says. "Have you seen?"

Yuri is still and silent. 

"It isn't witchcraft," Yuuri murmurs. "It's holy. It's-- it's the will of things to come, speaking to us. Through us. Through the perfected form." He takes a deep breath. "It's not witchcraft. It's a part of me. It's how I serve my people."

"If it's not evil, why did the empire destroy it?" Yuri asks. 

"I don't know," Yuuri answers, because it's true. "I don't know why the empire does anything."

It’s silent between them for a long time, before Yuri says, “My grandfather will get a better pension from my service if I die in the field. There’s no reward for cowardice.”

_ Every battle is the last _ . Yuuri remembers Viktor vividly. 

Yuuri supposes that there is still much about war he does not know or understand.

Eventually, Yuri says softly, "I want you to show me."

* * *

* * *

The house separate from the rest of the compound is quiet and small and empty but for the chest on the back wall and the scream of cicadas outside. It's nightfall. The shadows are getting longer and longer. Yuri swallows, tries to keep his heartbeat under control. 

There are three lanterns set in the room. They hang, suspended from the ceiling. There's a large, polished circle of brass leaned against the wall, reflecting the light back, making it brighter. Yuri can catch his own reflection in it every few moments or so, wiggling and wavering and distorted and yellowed. 

Yuri sits in the room uncomfortably with Hiroko and Otabek. Yuuri and his witch are nowhere to be seen. 

He wishes he had a word for the kind of scared he is in this moment. He wishes he knew how to explain it, the yawning knowledge scraping at the bottom of his stomach that something unspeakable is about to happen.

"Don't be nervous, Yu-chan," Hiroko says softly. "My son is very talented."

Yuri looks at her for a moment, reading her again. 

Yuuri has her face. Her round, brown eyes and sweet, sad smile. 

His fears are not assuaged.

The door on the other side of the room slides open. Yuuri's witch-- Minako-- steps in. 

She sits down on the floor, a few paces from the door. She pulls her knees underneath herself, pulls her wrists out of her sleeves. 

She pulls a small drum in front of herself. From the waistband of her trousers, she pulls a small, rounded wooden stave.

She strikes the drum once. 

Yuuri steps through the door. 

He's wearing something different-- a jacket with an open front. His chest is open to the air, with an angled shape painted on it in red ochre. He looks serious, composed. He stands with his head tall, his neck straight, his shoulders pulled back and away. He looks different. He looks almost like someone else entirely. His glasses are missing, and Yuri fixates on that, helplessly. This is a different Yuuri than the one he’s sparred with and talked to.

He's not wearing the boar's tusk collar around his neck. 

Minako strikes the drum again. 

Her beat is solid and steady. Quicker than a heartbeat, ringing out loud into the room. 

Yuuri draws his foot around himself in a broad circle. Yuri hears the rasp of his skin against the floor. Yuuri looks out, into nothing. 

Yuuri dances. 

He reels in broad circles, arms wide around himself. He traverses the floor, in fast steps. He spins. He dives. Yuri watches the lines of his body and the curve of his neck. There are angles suddenly built into him. There is motion and power in him, different than how he moved while sparring. There's something that flows all the same, but it's different. He's different.

Yuuri claps his hands together, he reaches out onto the air. He asks for something, Yuri can see it. Yuri can see how something of Yuuri leaves. He can see it in the moment. Yuuri is there, and suddenly he is not. Suddenly, the drum tempo shifts faster and Yuuri changes. Yuuri changes. Someone else is there.

Yuuri changes. 

Maybe Yuri does, too. 

The beaten brass mirror turns blinding. The room is somehow too bright, despite the inkiness to the strange shadows Yuuri throws as he leaps, legs spread wide and curved. 

The drum tempo speeds. Yuuri's feet stamp mantic on the ground. Yuuri's breath is loud in the room, panting. He spins. He lunges. He--

The drum stops. So does Yuuri. He freezes, his eyes looking into nothing, his expression twisted and strange, he sways. 

He collapses. 

Yuri doesn't realize he moves to stand, he just feels Otabek grab his arm, pull him down. Yuri looks down, on the floor, at Yuuri. At the sweat gathered into the locks of his dark hair and the way the jacket fans around his body. Are some of the seams pulled, the stitches strangely popped?

"If you touch him, will you stay?" Minako says, suddenly, on the other side of the room. 

Yuri looks at her. She's half standing, her eyes flashing, her expression grim. 

"If you touch him-- if you claim his body, will you be responsible for him?" She says. "Or will you run from the truth he's shown you?"

Yuri is dizzy for just moment, with the strange sensation of his future stretching out before him. 

Yuri looks at Yuuri, collapsed, seized.

"Fuck you," Yuri spits, and he steps to the floor to collect Yuuri. 

* * *

Yuuri vomits. His stomach curls, his spine shakes. Yuuri vomits, the acid burning his throat. He hurts. His whole body hurts. He feels foggy and confused. He feels-- he feels jittery and sick. He feels dizzy.

"Yuuri," a voice says to him, through the fog. "Yuuri-- are you here?"

Yuuri is hot. Yuuri is sweating. Yuuri feels wrong. 

Yuuri feels captured. Strangled. Hands-- cool hands-- help him sit up, and then he vomits again. 

"He needs a doctor," someone says. 

"Yuuri, where are you?" someone else says. 

"Drowning," Yuuri says. Something says with Yuuri's voice. "There is drowning."

* * *

"Shit," Minako murmurs. She brushes Yuuri's inky hair away from his forehead. He looks sweaty and pale. The many-sided shape painted on his chest in ochre is smeared. She doesn't touch it. She doesn't brush it away. She just looks at Yuuri, whose eyes are clenched shut, whose body is lax and heavy on the floor. 

The lantern has been brought closer. The shadows part away. The beaten brass mirror has been stashed away. 

Yuri sits there and looks down at Yuuri, lost, laying there. 

"What happened?" Yuri says, looking at him, looking at his face. Hiroko has disappeared with the bucket that has Yuuri's vomit in it. Otabek has disappeared into the shadows. 

It's just Yuri here, Yuri and this witch and Yuuri's body with Yuuri absent of it. 

"The vision is supposed to let him go once the dance finishes," Minako murmurs. She looks at Yuuri, intently. "He's still not here. It's not him, right now."

"Where is your healer?" Yuri says. "I know you have one. He could--"

"There isn't medicine for this," she interrupts. "Not medicine Phichit practices. There's just waiting and keeping him comfortable."

Yuri looks at him. 

"Is he-- does he have to dance more?" Yuri asks. He feels foolish. 

"If he did, he would," she answers. "He'd dance to death, if dancing was what had to be done."

Yuri looks from Yuuri back to Minako, who pulls a leather roll from her sleeve. 

"This is not witchcraft, young Plisetsky, but you'd be foolish to think that this is the toothless religion peddled by the false priests in your empire."

"It's not my fucking empire, you hag," Yuri answers. 

Minako laughs, just barely. "I suppose it isn't, is it?" she murmurs. “You stayed.”

She positions Yuuri’s head up onto an elevated pillow. It’s stiff, but it looks to be more comfortable on his neck. 

"Our gods live close to the earth,” she says. “Their power is near to us, and inescapable. If it served them to kill Yuuri, they would. I have seen them take dancers before, when our temples were fat and our college was powerful. Times are lean now. The invaders burned our oracles. The gods must be careful with their tools."

"He won't die?" Yuri asks. It seems like a real risk at this moment, with him febrile and sweating on the floor. 

"Not like this and not tonight," she says. "But this might be painful, for all of us. Sometimes, the knowledge is gentle. Sometimes, it is cruel."

Yuri sits on the floor and looks at Yuuri. Looks at Minako. Studies the way the shadows lick and disappear. 

“You asked me if I claimed him,” Yuri says. It’s a question, or at least, it feels like one.

“All apprentices one day are responsible for their masters,” she says. “Yuuri chose you. You chose to stay. To be responsible for him, for his safety and comfort. This is...sacred, in it’s way. You should know what it means, before you do it, and the responsibility it entails, before you do it.”

The room and the night are quiet and still, for a long time.

"You know the empire," Yuri says, eventually.

"You weren't the only one to escape," she answers. "The mercenaries either. They had been held at the borders of the kingdom long before they razed Sanktpet and slaughtered the prince and his family. They had an embassy. They had an ambassador."

Yuuri stirs just a little.

Minako watches him intently. 

The door opens again. 

Hiroko stands to the side of the door and the mercenary-- the one that Vanya nearly killed, the one who pulled a pistol on him just this morning-- stands in the frame, somehow looking even more pale and ragged than he did the last time Yuri saw him. 

"Is he okay?" He asks, his voice painfully soft in the room, crackling and breaking. 

Minako sighs, her chest rising and falling dramatically. She looks from Yuuri back to the mercenary. "I suppose you're concerned," she says. 

The mercenary flinches away from her. His silvery hair falls into his eyes. 

"Grow a thicker skin, you're a soldier," she murmurs.

The mercenary steps into the room, his steps light and soft. He sits down silently, carefully on the floor, beside Minako. 

He looks at Yuuri, something vulnerable in his eyes. 

"This is a bad idea," Minako says. "What you want. What he wants."

"He doesn't want what I want," the mercenary murmurs. 

Yuri snorts. 

The mercenary looks up at him. His eyes look hard and cruel, like ice. 

"He's fucking lying to you," Yuri says. "You're under his skin."

"Don't talk about what you don't know," the mercenary says. 

"I'm not fucking scared of you, idiot," Yuri replies. "I'm not scared of fucking death and I'm not scared of you."

Minako takes another deep breath. "I will skin both of you if you do not stop," she says. "Your duke lies in religious ecstasy.  _ Behave _ ."

The mercenary huffs a short breath. Yuri shuts up. 

_ There is drowning. _

Yuri thinks about the sound in Yuuri's mouth. The voice that didn't belong to him. He thinks about how Yuuri moved. He thinks about the strange red shape painted onto his chest.

_ There is drowning.  _

Yuri looks at the mercenary. He looks at Minako. He looks at Hiroko still standing in the open doorway, her face obscured by shadow at this distance. He feels Otabek behind. 

Yuri waits, unsure, for the strange duke's fever to break.

* * *

He'd been out by the lake, considering bathing in the dark despite being alone, when Hiroko had appeared like a ghost from out of the darkness, holding a bucket. 

"You should come with me," she'd said. "He'd want you."

Viktor doesn’t ask  _ who _ and he doesn’t argue. He doesn’t say anything, he just follows her through the dark and back to the house apart from the palace. 

Hiroko walks slowly and deliberately. Viktor does, too. The lantern light inside is muted by the sliding doors, just barely managing to glow into the outside. 

Hiroko stands beside the door, and she says softly, "Dancing is dangerous. Sometimes, he can get hurt."

Viktor looks at her. Looks back at the door. 

“He told me,” he says. “He said it could take him anywhere.”

Hiroko nods. The gesture is just barely visible in the darkness.

"I thought the duke had a duty," Viktor murmurs. 

"Is that what he told you?" She answers. 

"He told me he doesn't want my company, madam," he says. "I don't want to disrespect his wishes."

"My son is a bad liar," she answers.

"What about my intentions?" Viktor asks. He knows it's unkind. Impudent. Hurtful for the sake of being hurtful. "What about me? Why should you trust me, just the hired help?"

"Don't be foolish," she says. "If your intentions were impure, you would have hurt him long before he got the chance to hurt himself."

She slides the door open. "Go," she says.

Viktor steps inside. 

And now, Viktor sits on the floor in the dark and looks at Yuuri. 

He's not sure why he's here. Yuuri's pushed him away. Yuuri's told him what he wants, and it's not him hanging around. He's not sure why he didn't listen. Viktor's heart aches to look at him. At how Yuuri is here but not here. 

The prisoner sitting across from him looks at Yuuri intently, his blonde brows furrowed. 

"Why did he talk about drowning?" He asks.

Viktor hates his voice. He has a heavy northern accent, rough through the edges and feeding up through his nose. Viktor hates this child. He hates his voice. He hates his skinny chest and his spindly fingers and his ratty, yellow hair. Viktor hates that this child, this enemy has been brought in to see Yuuri do something so strange and so beautiful. He hates that he's here when Yuuri is so vulnerable. He hates that he thinks he's entitled to answers.  

"Only he knows," Minako answers. 

"That's not an answer," the prisoner spits back. 

"You are not owed one, boy," Viktor hisses across Yuuri's legs. 

"You are bold to assume you have a place here," Minako says. "We paid for a mercenary, not a bedwarmer, Operator Feltsman, or did you forget?"

"Feltsman?" The prisoner says, suddenly going from sitting to standing-- from repose to defense nearly instantly. "You're Feltsman?"

Viktor has a knife at his belt and a revolver at his thigh. The lantern can be used, too. He's not as sharp as he'd like to be, but his fingers itch, ready to take a weapon, ready to make quick work of this mouthy child that has already tried to kill him. 

Viktor is ready, but he doesn't start fights. He finishes them. 

"I thought you didn't fear death, young Plisetsky," Minako murmurs. 

The prisoner slowly sits back down, wary. 

"Good," Minako murmurs. "I need to make tea. If he wakes or moves, one of you come get me."

Viktor nods, again. Minako stands up with all the delicate, deliberate physical force of a deer darting through the woods and she slips through the door outside. 

There's silence for a moment, just the soft sound of Yuuri's breath.

"You've killed fifty men," the prisoner says, his voice quiet. Nearly awed. 

"I have," Viktor answers. He's killed more than fifty. All told, Viktor has killed eighty-seven people. But if fifty is the number the empire is running with, fifty is the number he'll use. 

"You have a bounty on your head," the prisoner says. "A large one."

Viktor nods. He's well aware. 

"I thought you were a myth," the prisoner says. "Something they told us in the barracks to make us behave."

"I am very much real, imperial," Viktor answers. "And I have long been a better killer than you."

"Your duke trusts me," the imperial murmurs. "Why don't you?"

"Trust is earned," he says. "Ask Otabek, who despite his best efforts still isn't actually invisible."

There's a short huff from a shadow. Laughter.

"I've been fucking honest with you," he says, bitterly. "With all of you."

Viktor hates this child. 

Yuuri's breath hitches, just a little. His eyelids flutter. 

Viktor feels his own heartbeat speed intolerably in his chest. He leans down, to study him. 

"Yuuri?" He says, softly. 

Yuuri's eyes flicker open, gently. He looks at Viktor. 

"Oh no," Yuuri says, softly. 

The prisoner stands up on the other side of Yuuri and steps away, outside. 

"Yuuri," Viktor murmurs. "Yuuri, how do you feel?"

Yuuri's brown eyes water. His expression twists. "It's coming and we're not going-- it's coming. Thunder and drowning and--" His eyes close again. He wretches. 

Otabek slips in from the shadows with a basin. Yuuri vomits into it, unceremoniously. 

"You're back," Minako says, stepping into the room, holding a pot of tea and a set of cups. "What did you--"

"Minako it's coming," Yuuri calls. "I-- it's coming. It's coming. I'm-- I can't do anything, I can't stop it."

Minako sits down, helps Yuuri up, holds him by his shoulders with a tight, firm grip. "Yuuri," she says. "What--"

"It's coming. They're coming. Soon. We have to go, Minako, we have to leave, they're coming. The empire is coming and it's too late."

"Yuuri--"

"The drowning is coming and the thunder," Yuuri says, again. He sounds urgent and overwhelmed and terrified. "We have to take the harvest and leave. I can feel it. I can feel it."

Minako looks at him, seriously. "Okay," she says. "We can start preparation."

Yuuri nods, starting but like he can't stop. He swallows. "Minako, I am afraid," he says. 

"I know," she says, her voice still firm and calm. "But we are called to our gifts to make the shape of the future less fearful.”

Yuuri looks from her to Viktor. 

His expression goes from panicked to indescribably sad. Devastated. His mouth twists and his eyes close and tears well up at the sides of his eyes. 

"I hurt you," Yuuri says. "I hurt you. Why won't you leave?" He sobs. He hides his face into his hands. "I hurt you, Viktor, you have to leave! It's too dangerous! You have to leave and I have to do my duty!"

Viktor shakes his head. 

_ My son is a bad liar _ .

It’s somehow even worse, the way Yuuri tells the truth.

"Yuuri," Minako says. "We need to get you cleaned up--"

"You have to leave," Yuuri repeats. He pulls his face out of his hands. His eyes are red from crying, his expression is open and wrecked. "I didn’t know before and you got hurt but now I  _ do! _ I know! Just forget me and live your life! Forget me and live, Viktor, please.  _ Please! _ "

Yuuri’s voice echoes, desperate, in the room.

"No," Viktor says. 

Yuuri looks at him, betrayed. 

"You-- you told me, once, that we could-- you told us we had a hearth with your people," he says. He remembers it so clearly. He remembers the light. He remembers the grass. He remembers it, even though the beginning of the summer feels so far away now. "You told us if we lived to be old men, we'd have a hearth in Hasetsu. I think this gives me duty. I think this gives me citizenship. I think this means my life means living for you."

Yuuri shakes his head. He extricates himself from Minako roughly, his movement unbalanced and unsure. He throws himself at Viktor, his body hot and sweating. He grips Viktor's arms hard enough he knows he'll have bruises there. 

He shakes his head, his eyes heavy with tears. "I revoke it," he says. "I banish you. I release you from your contract. I declare you an enemy of my court. You have to go. You have to go and be safe and live."

"Not without you, my duke," Viktor answers. "Not without you, my love."

* * *


	12. ripening

Yuuri blinks awake slowly, his body and eyes heavy. He's sore. His spine aches; so do the balls and arches of his feet. His shoulders. His chest.

He sits up suddenly, knowing.

The memory hits him like a bolt of lightning. The drowning. 

Yuuri turns in the room. Minako is asleep on the other side of the floor. Yuri is asleep beside Otabek, a few paces apart from her.

Yuuri turns, and beside him in a crumpled heap is Viktor. 

Yuuri's heart twists in his chest. He feels awful. Wrung out and exhausted and hollow. He feels like something has been wrenched out of him. He feels like part of himself has been left exposed and unable to heal. 

He rubs at his chest. The paint has been dabbed away but the oil it's bound in remains stuck to his chest. The connection still not quite severed. The bridge still open between himself and what waits on the other side. 

Yuuri gets up quietly and slowly, and he steps through the screen door to the outside. 

The late summer sun still has not risen, not all the way. Time slips throughout the season, making their every moment here shorter and shorter and shorter. 

The water in the shower is cold, not yet sun-warmed. It feels grounding and balanced on his skin. It washes away the last of the paint, the salt dried on his skin. It clears the fogginess on his mind. 

Yuuri looks at the clothes he wore to dance in, crumpled and sweaty. He wrinkles his nose at them. He wishes he could get his clothes without someone seeing him. 

He turns around, and Viktor's standing there. His back is to him and his posture is tall and straight and intentional. Yuuri looks at him. 

"Viktor," he says. His voice is hoarse.

"I wanted to talk to you," Viktor says. "Before-- before you could put distance between us again."

Yuuri looks at him. His free hand is tucked behind himself, clenched into a fist. His other arm is still tied in the sling.

"I told you I loved you," he says. "I meant it. I've loved you since first we met." He shifts on his feet. His silvery hair sways a bit as he moves. "We met in a tavern, on the border of a territory held by a different noble family. I had gone to check on Nadya in the bay, and you did, too. You told me you knew her."

Yuuri blinks. "No, Viktor that must have been--"

"We were both quite drunk," he says. "You more than I. And we danced in the tavern and you laughed so brightly and you moved so brilliantly. I thought you were the brightest star I'd ever seen. You asked me to the be captain of your guard."

Yuuri shakes his head, horrified. He's not supposed to drink because of this. He never drinks because of this--

"The horses," Yuuri mumbles. "I had to help the horse give labor. We were trading with them for pigs for the season."

Someone gave him a drink, and Yuuri took it. Nishigori was asleep. 

Yuuri doesn't remember the rest of the night.

"You barely knew me and you brought me into your life. You did it twice," Viktor continues. "It's just who you are."

Yuuri looks at him. He wishes he could see his face. He wishes he knew what to say. He wishes he weren't here.  He wishes they were both someone else. 

"I meant what I told you," Viktor says. "And loving you means that I don't leave. It means that I stay."

Viktor pauses, for just a moment. "Maybe it doesn't mean that you want me, but it does mean that I do my job and I protect you."

_ Do you regret it? _

"We're all going to die," Yuuri says. "We all have to flee. They're coming."

"Then we'll evacuate," Viktor says. "And I'll do what I'm best at, what I was hired to do, and I'll help. I'll help and I'll protect you."

He pauses. He turns his head, just a little. His eyes are closed, but Yuuri can see his features. Yuuri can see his face.

"Viktor," Yuuri says. "You have to promise that if it comes to me or anyone else-- even you-- you'll let me go."

Viktor stills, eerie. He turns back away, and his posture shifts. His shoulders, his spine-- he curls inward. Defensively, away from Yuuri.  He runs his free hand through his hair, getting caught in the tangles.

"You just don't understand it, Yuuri, do you?" He sighs. "You have a duty. Sure. You have a community to protect and people who rely on you and depend on you. Why do you think dying for them is better than living for them? Why do you think being happy is selfish? Why--"

_ Why did you reject me? _

Yuuri can hear it, unsaid; ringing like a bell. 

"Why do you think being happy and being alive is a gift you only give yourself?" He asks instead. "You wouldn't do us any good dead, and I'd like to remind you that a fairly explicit part of being paid involves leaving my employer alive to pay me."

"It's my duty, Viktor!" Yuuri cries. "I do not own myself! I am owned and indebted to Hasetsu and to its people and to you. Anything-- anything selfish I do, it's theft. It's stealing something from the people I'm supposed to lead and protect."

"I'm trying to tell you that it's not," Viktor says. "It's not selfish to be happy. It's not selfish to live."

Viktor pauses for just a moment; it's a moment that aches. "I love you. I thought maybe you loved me, too."

"I do, Viktor," Yuuri breathes. "I love you. I never thought I'd love anyone, the way I love you."

"And you think that's selfish?" Viktor cries out, his voice loud and echoing. "You're saying that's something you stole?" Viktor laughs, bitterly. It's cruel. "You're so thoughtless."

"I can't put what I want in front of other peoples'--"

"What about me?" Viktor demands. "What about what I want?"

"You'd forget me," Yuuri whispers. 

"Forgetting is more your speed than mine, my Duke," Viktor mutters. 

"That's low," Yuuri says. 

"It's true," Viktor retorts. He shakes his head. His long, silver hair shakes a little as he does. "I never forgot you. I could never forget you. You're not like anyone else. You're the love of my life, and you think that the way you feel about me is an indicator of your own personal failure as a leader."

"I don't mean to hurt you," Yuuri says, sheepishly. 

"It can be as accidental as you like, it still hurts," he says. 

Yuuri looks away from Viktor. He looks down at the wooden slats of the platform, at the water pooled there between the gaps in the boards. He studies it, looking for the right thing to say. 

"I love you so much, Yuuri," Viktor says. "I wish you would love me, too."

Yuuri's throat feels tight. 

"What if-- what if other people get hurt, because I loved you," Yuuri says. "What if I'm distracted, or what if I do something wrong? How would anyone forgive me? How would I forgive me? How...how would you forgive me?" Yuuri takes a deep breath. It shakes in his throat and his lungs. 

"I love you, Viktor," he says. "I never thought I would love anyone, but I love you."

The sun rises. The birds in the trees overhead wake up and start to sing.

"I wish I could just be Yuuri," he says. He whispers. "I wish you could just be Viktor. I wish you didn't have to be a knight. I wish I didn't have to be a duke. I wish we could just be ourselves."

Viktor takes a deep breath. Yuuri sees it in how his spine grows tall and straight. 

"Myself isn't very good, Yuuri," he murmurs. "But you make me wish he were better. I was better." He swallows. "I wish I weren't a knight, either. I wish I weren't a killer. I wish I weren't a weapon of war. But I can be useful to you, like that. And maybe all the terrible things I've done...all the terrible things I am, it will be worth it." He pauses for just a moment, long enough that Yuuri becomes aware of the feeling of the air on his wet skin; cold.  "Let me show you who I am, really," he continues. "Let me be a knight. Let me do what I do best, for you." He tucks his hair behind his ear. The gesture is painfully vulnerable, even from behind like this. "I don't think it ever mattered, if I can't do it for you when it matters most."

Yuuri steps away from the shower. The grass underfoot sticks to his wet skin. The dirt picks up on the soles of his feet. 

He stops, standing just behind Viktor. Close enough he could reach out, just barely, and touch him. 

"I felt you drowning," Yuuri murmurs. "I felt the water flow up and press against every part of your body. I felt you drown. I felt you die. I felt it, Viktor."

Yuuri takes a deep breath. "I felt the end of everyone I loved," he says. "And you're the only one I think I can actually save, and you just won't let me."

Viktor shakes his head. "It's going to take more than this to get rid of me," he says. His voice is soft and fond. 

Yuuri steps forward, all the way, into Viktor's space. He pulls him into his arms, feeling the water from the shower soak into his clothes. He holds him as tightly as he dares, pressing him into him. 

"You can't carry this all on your own," Viktor murmurs. "You're a leader, Yuuri, but you aren't alone. You aren't alone. Let us help. Let us help you plan. Let us help each other."

Yuuri takes a deep breath. 

Okay.

"Viktor, I'm naked," he says. "Can you grab fresh clothes for me, from the chest? We need to plan the harvest and evacuation."

Viktor draws up a little straighter. He nods. 

"Of course," he answers. "I can assemble the company if you give me an hour."

"I think first I should stop being naked," he says.

Viktor nods. 

He turns around and looks at Yuuri. His expression is surprised but warm. He looks tired. His eyes look tired and his body looks sore. His hair is tangled and greasy. He looks like he was up all night, for too many nights in a row. 

"Okay," he says. He nods. "Let me grab your clothes."

Yuuri feels himself blush to the roots of his hair.  

* * *

* * *

Yuuri dresses himself. Viktor stands outside, with him. The day feels strange.

There was something unreal about last night. There's something unreal about Yuuri dancing every time, something about how he knows, but here in the morning after, with the understanding of terms, hanging between them, it feels even stranger. 

Yuuri carefully slides the collar back around his neck, the last thing he takes from Viktor who grabbed his clothes from inside. 

He looks at him. He looks tired, but refreshed.

"You need to bathe," he says, looking at him. "You look like a mess."

Viktor shrugs, or tries to. His collarbone and shoulder still ache, the sling and bandages still tight. "I've been working on repairing Nadya," he says. It's true, even if it is a dodge. With all this honesty now between them, he feels entitled to a few dodges.

Yuuri shakes his head. "You should use the shower. There's some rainwater still left," he says. 

Viktor shakes his head. "There's work to do," he answers. "I'll bathe later in the lake."

Yuuri nods. "Okay," he says. He bites his bottom lip, contemplative. "I've never done anything like this before."

"You said you were on the run for years before you settled here," he says. They turn back toward the house, walking slowly across the grassy courtyard.

Yuuri shakes his head. "I was never duke before," he says. "Mother and Minako always made the decisions."

"They're still here," he says. "And I know they'll want to help."

Yuuri takes a deep breath. Their pace across the small courtyard is glacial. 

Yuuri pauses for a moment, and he turns and looks at Viktor. His brown eyes wide and serious. Viktor suddenly finds his hand wrapped in Yuuri's, Yuuri gripping his so tightly his knuckles have started to grind together and ache. 

"I love you," he says. His voice is quiet and low and grave.

Viktor looks at him, at Yuuri who stands just a little smaller than he does, at Yuuri who carries the weight of a nation on his shoulders, at Yuuri who loves him. 

"I love you too," Viktor answers. 

Yuuri stands up, onto his tiptoes. He reaches up and out, to take Viktor into his hands, and kisses him gently on the mouth. 

Viktor's heartbeat stirs wonderfully. He reaches out with his good arm and pulls Yuuri in close to him. Feels his body as warm weight pressed against him. This live creature-- this animal he has found a home in. 

Yuuri pulls away. He looks up at him, all warm brown eyes. 

"I love you," Yuuri repeats.

Yuuri slides the door open, and together they step inside. 

* * *

The room is still drowsy and dark when Yuuri steps back into it. Minako has awoken and is sitting in one corner of the room with a bowl of tea. Yuuri's mother sits beside her with Mari. There's a tray with covered bowls and a basket-- breakfast and tea. Yuuri feels profoundly grateful to his sister in this moment. 

Nearer to them, though, Otabek and Yuri are waking, blinking and squinting into the room. 

Yuri blinks for a moment, looking at him, before he scrambles to his feet quick enough to make Yuuri dizzy. He pulls himself into a salute, and then into a stiff, strange position. 

"At rest, soldier," Otabek murmurs from the floor. 

Yuri looks at him, and then he looks at Otabek, and then he yawns with his whole mouth and shoulders, his eyes watering. 

"Old habits," Otabek says, still on the floor, leaning upright on his arm. 

"Are you okay?" Yuri asks him, after he's done yawning. "That looked-- it looked unpleasant."

"It was," Yuuri answers. 

"You want me to do that?" Yuri asks him. He looks at Yuuri's neck, and then to his chest. 

"I think you could," Yuuri answers. "And I think if you can do such a thing, then you must."

Yuri looks away from him. 

"Think about it," Yuuri says. "We couldn't start now; we have to plan an evacuation."

"Already?" Minako asks. 

Yuuri nods. "It's coming," he says. "Mari, can you tell Yuuko that we need to have the rice harvested in three days time?"

Mari nods. "We're lucky it's ready so soon," she says. "The season was good to us."

Yuuri nods. He looks back at Yuri. "You know better than anyone what's coming," Yuuri says. "You know what the armor looks like and what the numbers might be and their strategy."

Yuri goes a little pale. "You want to fight them?" He asks. 

"We don't have a choice," Viktor says. 

Yuri looks at Viktor. His eyes narrow. "They'll kill you. It's an antique. You all pilot machines that belong in junkyards, not in service. And their numbers will overwhelm you-- they know you're here. They've known since we didn't come back from the mission."

"We know," Viktor says. "That's why we need to plan."

Yuri looks from Viktor to Yuuri. His green eyes narrow. "You're both foolish," he says. "You're both fucking idiots."

"Keep a civil tongue in your head when you address the duke," Viktor hisses, his voice sharp. 

"How about both of you remain civil," Yuuri says. "I don't have time to keep the peace between you two. I don't have any time at all."

They both have the decency to look embarrassed. 

Yuuri strides across the room to sit with his mother and Minako. He grabs a bowl of rice and says, "Okay. We need paper and ink. We need to get ready. We need to plan this."

Minako nods. "We have maps of the area. Young Plisetsky, come show us where the units are camped."

* * *

There are some parts of this Viktor can be helpful with. Some things like how to best work with their resources, how to structure leaving so that the most vulnerable people get away the fastest, with the least to fear. He doesn't know the trails as well as Minako and Hiroko do, but that's why Minako and Hiroko are here, pointing down long, inked paths up stacked hills and forests. 

"How much can one of the company carry?" Yuuri asks him, looking up. 

"Depends on the unit," he answers. "We could send JJ and Otabek ahead with some of the haul, though."

Yuuri nods. "We're going to have to. Carts can't make the fastest paths. The hidden paths."

There are some parts he can't be helpful with, like when the prison-the boy- Yuri Plisetsky sits down beside them and marks on the map the approximate location, along with how they'd best draw the fight into small pockets, to control their numbers, to keep things in their favor. 

Viktor hates this child, still, even if he is proving useful. 

Hours pass and the shadows get longer and longer. 

"You'll leave first," Mari says, bent over a list of people and a rough list of what possessions they cannot leave behind. 

"Excuse me?" Yuuri asks, looking up from a trail he's sketched over carefully in graphite. 

"You'll have to leave first," she repeats. "We can't risk you getting caught in a firefight. Viktor and Yurio have both made it clear that it gets riskier as time goes on."

That's another thing that's happened in the long morning hours. The Plisetsky child has been given a nickname. Yurio. Charming. 

"I can't leave until I know everyone is safe," Yuuri answers, sighing. "It's my duty."

"It's your duty to remain safe so that the duke is well when we make it to our home," Minako says. "You will go with one of the first parties, and that is that."

Yuuri pauses after a long moment, closing his eyes. He takes a long breath. 

"I need a bowl of tea," he says, eventually. 

Minako helps him stand up. He still moves gingerly, like he's sore. Viktor looks at him, at how he takes a breath, at how he looks at all of them. 

"Can we meet again in an hour?" He asks. "We could all use a break."

Viktor looks at him. He looks weary already.

"Of course," Hiroko says. "We'll all eat something and change out of last night's clothes."

Viktor feels himself flush to the roots of his tangled hair. He's been wearing the same clothes for nearly a week. 

Yuuri nods, and he drifts out of the room. 

Viktor sits there, still staring blankly at the map, before Minako says, "We already know you don't give a damn about our approval."

"Your approval, Minako," Mari mutters. "Don't put words in my mouth. In Mama's either."

"Whatever," Minako sighs. "Go talk some sense into him, at any rate. If he won't listen to me, maybe he'll listen to you."

"His bedwarmer, you mean?" Viktor asks.

Minako smirks. "You think you're clever," she says. 

"I know I'm clever," Viktor answers. He gets up from the floor and follows Yuuri.

Yuuri has walked back to the lake, looking out at the water, his expression unreadable. 

"I guess you want to change my mind," Yuuri says, as he stands beside him. 

"I want to, but I figure I can't," Viktor says. 

Yuuri nods. He turns and looks at Viktor. 

"Can I get you to bathe now?" He asks.

Viktor laughs, just barely. "Okay," he says. "Okay."

Yuuri nods. He walks down to the bathing dock, and Viktor follows him. Yuuri pulls something from a small chest on the dock, a bundle and hands it to Viktor.

There's a small bar of soap and a wooden comb. Yuuri gestures, to the lake. 

"You want to watch?" Viktor asks him, raising an eyebrow.

Yuuri turns just a little pink, but he holds his gaze when he nods. 

"Your shoulder," he says. "I need to help you with your-- with the sling."

Viktor smiles and nods. "With the sling," he murmurs. "Of course."

Yuuri's hands are smooth and practiced as he helps Viktor out of his sling and bandages, out of his shirt. Yuuri's touch is careful on his back, his chest, his shoulders.

He gets to Viktor's waist-- to his trousers, more accurately-- and he pauses. 

"Yuuri?" Viktor asks, softly. 

Yuuri looks up, suddenly, and leans in forward to kiss Viktor. 

Viktor smiles against Yuuri's lips before he carefully, carefully embraces him. Again.

Yuuri kisses him, and then he pulls away and unbuttons Viktor's trousers. He pulls them off him and then gestures back toward the lake. 

"Stay near," Yuuri says. "We need to do something about your hair."

Viktor steps, naked, into the cool lake water. He shivers for just a moment, growing accustomed to it, before he dives to get all the way wet. He comes back up, and Yuuri sits on the edge of the dock with his pants hiked up to his knees, holding the soap and the comb. 

Viktor paddles over to him and floats, sitting low in the water. 

"You should have braided this," Yuuri says, carefully beginning to work the knots out from the bottom. 

"I didn't have the energy," Viktor says. 

"You were repairing armor," Yuuri replies. "I thought that would take more energy."

Viktor shakes his head. "It's different," he says. "Hard to explain."

Yuuri makes a small sound, an acknowledgement, but mostly he works quietly and gently, pulling more and more of Viktor's hair into his hands, through the comb, smooth and clean and untangled. Viktor feels him run his fingers through the lather.

"You could join me, you know," he says, looking up at him. It's like it was that night in the early summer. It's different. 

Yuuri shakes his head. "We don't have the time," he says. "We only have an hour and your hair is impossible."

Viktor sighs again, theatrical. He gathers his hair into his hands and squeezes the water from it.

Yuuri glances down at him, eyes resting a little long his shoulders, on his chest. It feels mischievous, to let Yuuri steal looks of him like this. 

"Damn my hair," Viktor says. "Cut it off."

Yuuri chuckles. "You can't mean that," he says. 

"No, no," Viktor says. "Hand me my trousers. I have a pair of snips in there. Cut off my hair and join me in the water." 

Yuuri freezes, his hands going still. 

Viktor looks up at him, from in the water.

"Really?" Yuuri asks.

Viktor nods. "Let the birds make nests out of it."

"Before...before you do," Yuuri says. "Can I-- could I--" His hand are still but affectionate. 

Viktor smiles. "A lock?" He asks.

Yuuri nods. 

"Yes," Viktor replies. 

Yuuri quickly, carefully, takes a long lock of his hair and braids it. He fiddles in Viktor's trouser and pulls a pair of snips. He cuts the hair, the lock singular in his hand.

Yuuri looks at it. 

"Are you sure?" He asks.

Viktor nods. "Can you?" He asks back. "I don't have a great view and I've never done it well, myself."

Yuuri nods. Pauses.

"How-- how short?" He asks.

"As short as you'd like it," Viktor says. 

The snips are blunt and inaccurate. Viktor can tell by the way they tug and pull at his hair. Yuuri works quickly, though, and moment by moment, Viktor's head gets lighter. 

Yuuri runs his hands over his head, scratching over his scalp, feeling him. His hair is short. 

"Rinse," Yuuri orders him, and Viktor ducks into the water, tossing his head back and forth. 

He comes back up, and turns around, to look at Yuuri. His hair still falls in a fringe over his eyes, brushing against his cheekbones. He runs his hands through it. It feels alien. It feels new.

He looks up at Yuuri, from the water. 

"Will you join me now?" He asks. 

Yuuri smiles, laughs a little. 

"I should eat something," he says. "And you should too. And get dressed."

Viktor sighs, again. 

"But maybe...maybe tonight. If you still want to," Yuuri murmurs. "If you want to."

Viktor nods. His head moves too quickly; lighter than he thought it would be. "Yes," he says. "Please-- yes. Yes."

Yuuri looks down, bashful. "Yes," he echoes. 

He gets up from the dock, tossing the scissors back to the pile of Viktor's clothes. He steps away. "I need to eat something," he says. "I'll see you."

"I'll see you!" Viktor calls after him, standing, losing his footing, falling back into the water.

* * *

* * *

Yuuri walks away from the dock, the lock of Viktor's hair held in his hands. He moves quickly, wandering back to the palace, to the kitchens. 

He studies the cord of silvery hair in his hands, braiding it absently so he can wrap it around his neck, and suddenly someone tackles him at his knees and he goes down hard into the dirt. 

"Yuuri!" Axel shouts, her voice piercing in his ear. "Mama says we have to pack because we're leaving!"

Yuuri takes a deep breath before he sits up, the three sisters gathered around him tight and close. 

"Hello, girls," Yuuri says. "Good afternoon."

"Is it true?" Loop demands. 

"Are we leaving?" Lutz cries.

Yuuri looks at the three of them, gathered around him. Their faces small and anxious. 

"We are," he says, gravely. He reaches out and takes Axel's hand in his, and looks her. "We're leaving because it's not going to be safe here anymore. It's been a long time since we had to run like this. We did it a lot when I was younger, like all of you." 

Axel looks worried, her little brow furrowing. 

"But what about the rabbits?" She asks. 

"And the ducks?" Lutz asks.

"And the persimmons?" Loop asks. 

Yuuri looks at them, at their chubby cheeks and fearful eyes. 

"I know it's scary to leave," Yuuri says. "I know that you don't know what else is there. I need you to trust me. I need you to trust that we'll be okay. I need you to trust that even though where we're going is different, there will be rabbits and ducks and persimmons there, too."

"Where are we going Yuuri?" Axel asks, whining. 

"We're going home," Yuuri answers. "We're going back to Hasetsu. Where we came from."

"But we're home  _ here _ ," Lutz shouts, her voice high enough to break on the air. 

Yuuri looks at her, still holding her sister's hands tight. He tries to remember, what his mother said to him when they fled the first time, the second time, the third time-- what she said to him all those years, his life, on the run. 

He wishes they could stay. He wishes it were safe. He wishes they would never have to run. 

"I know," Yuuri says. "I know. I know. But it's not safe, and you have to be safe. That's my job. It's my job, to make sure you're safe."

"I don't want to go!" Lutz cries. 

"We don't want to go!" Loop echoes. 

"I know," Yuuri says. "I know you don't. I didn't want to go either. I know. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry."

"Axel!" Yuuko calls suddenly, from ahead. "Lutz! Loop! What are you doing?"

She appears from around a bend in the path, a basket on her hips. She looks at them, at Yuuri kneeling in the dirt in front of them. Inadequate.

"Girls, you aren't bothering Yuuri are you?" She asks. 

Yuuri stands up. "No, they aren't bothering me at all," he says. "It's fine, Yuuko. We're fine."

She looks at the four of them. She looks skeptical, to say the least. 

"Yuuri has a lot to do," Yuuko says, looking at her daughters that crowd up around her legs. "Yuuri has a lot to do and so do we. There's a lot of work for everyone."

"We don't want to go!" Loop shrieks. "Mama, we don't want to go!"

"No one wants to go, my darlings," Yuuko says, turning back to the path, away from Yuuri. "But we must."

Yuuri stands there, watching them go. Toward the palace, toward the kitchen. Toward the last hours of their lives here. 

Yuuri hears the birdsong around himself, lonely and hollow. 

He's not very hungry, anymore.

* * *

Yuuri leaves. Viktor does too. Yuri watches the space they once occupied, and he shakes his head. It feels like venom in him, how much he can't stand this man. This petulant fool that stalks after the duke. 

Mari stands up and loads the tray with the dishes. "I'm going to run these back to the kitchens," she says. "Talk to Yuuko about how everything's going."

Minako nods. "I'm going to start gathering what's in the throne room to come with us," she says.

And just like that, Yuri is alone with Otabek, with everything that's happened caught between them. 

Yuri sits there, in the cottage by the palace, the air thick and strange.

"I'm going outside," he says. 

The sun has come up, high and bright. The air is wet and thick. Yuri closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. 

"Is it what you thought it would be?" Otabek asks him, behind him. His voice is calm and steady. His voice is always calm and steady. Yuri wonders what it would take to upset him. It feels like all he does around him is scream and cry and fall apart. It feels like all he's done since he was captur-- since he came here is fall apart. 

"It was worse," Yuri answers, because that's true. 

"All power comes at a price," Otabek says. "The greater the power, the more dear the price."

Yuri sits down on the edge of the porch. It's different out here. 

"It feels like there's a tiger in there or something," he says. "Do you feel that, too? It's fucking weird, right?"

Otabek sits down beside him. The courtyard stretches out in front of them. 

"It's weird, yeah," Otabek answers. 

Yuri leans forward, resting his head onto his knees. 

"We're going to die," he says, laughing. "Even the witch thinks so. We should take what we can carry and fucking run for the hills."

"If Yuuri thought we were going to die, he wouldn't let us stay here. At least, he wouldn't let Viktor stay here," Otabek answers. 

Yuri studies the bright green grass that blankets the courtyard. He takes a deep breath.

"Do you ever stop remembering?" He asks. "The cities?"

"I haven't," Otabek answers. "I can't get used to the songbirds. Or the grasshoppers."

"The children are so fat," Yuri answers. "So small and so fat."

"Yes," Otabek says. "And they've never held a knife."

"Why did you leave?" Yuri asks him. "I didn't have a choice. You imprisoned me. But why did you leave?"

"I had a fever," he says. "I met Viktor and Chris in armor, on the battlefield. In a wasteland. Have you seen them? All the mud?"

Yuri nods. He watches a caterpillar slowly traveling up a blade of grass. 

"There was a wound, in my arm. It was septic. I had a fever. I was in armor, far away from a unit. I think they left me there to die," he says. "I'm told I fought them, and that I almost killed Viktor, when I passed out. I don't remember. I remember waking up in the waste, in front of a fire, in pain. I remember the pain."

Yuri looks at him, up at his grey eyes and serious, distant expression. 

"They left my armor there. Chris carried me in Kaspar's arms. I was tied to a board. Phichit sawed my arm off in a barn. They lied about who I was so the farmer wouldn't kill me," he says. "I remember the pain."

"You didn't choose either," Yuri says. 

"I didn't," he says. "And I tried to kill Viktor a fair few more times before I trusted him." 

Otabek takes a long, deep breath. 

“I killed Yakov, too,” Otabek says. “That’s what they’ve told me, at least. I killed Viktor’s father.”

“I didn’t manage to kill anyone,” Yuri murmurs. “Not this time.”

Yuri doesn’t say it, but it feels loud, unspoken. 

_ I didn’t kill anyone. Why do they trust you? _

"I remember the pain,” Otabek says. “I remember Phichit sawing off my arm.”

The air is heavy and thick.

“Pain is honest,” Otabek murmurs. “It’s honest and it’s vulnerable. There’s nothing as honest as someone screaming for their life in a barn in the middle of nowhere. I think that’s why Viktor forgave me as quickly as he did. The damage was visible.”

It’s hot, but Otabek wears a long sleeved shirt, to cover what’s left of his arm. The scar. 

“You have a soldier’s eyes,” Otabek says. His voice is low. “They don’t see it. I do.”

“Did you leave anyone?” Yuri asks him.

“I was an orphan,” Otabek answers. “Who did you leave?”

“My grandfather gets my pension,” Yuri answers. “If they find out I’m a traitor, he’ll die. They’ll either kill him or starve him.”

“I remember the pain,” Otabek repeats. “It doesn't scare me more than the empire did. It  _ saved _ me. The pain saved me.”

A bird settles down into the grass. It hops for a moment, before fluttering back off.

“The cities were silent because we ate the songbirds,” Otabek says. “The pain was awful, but it saved me from that. Maybe I didn't choose at the time, but I choose now. I chose long ago."

Yuri sits up. He looks over at Otabek. "I still think we're going to die," he says. 

"I'd rather die here than in imperial armor," Otabek answers.

"Shit," Yuri says. He rolls his eyes, and then coming across the courtyard is the man himself. Fucking Viktor. 

Otabek looks at Viktor, his grey eyes narrowing. "You cut your hair," he says. 

Viktor nods. "I did," he answers. "More lightweight."

"I'd bet," Otabek replies. 

"He's Feltsman," Yurio says. 

"He is," Otabek answers. 

"His bounty is enough to retire into the deep empire and never work again," Yurio says. "Did you know this?" He looks at Viktor, assessing him again. "Did you know this?"

"I'm a dangerous man," Viktor says. "I nearly shot you. You still doubt this."

"Plenty of men are killers," Yurio says. "How did you kill so many that they would set the bounty that high? You said you've--"

"This is not a point of pride for me," Viktor interrupts. "Nor is it a game."

Yuri hates this guy. 

He hates his beautiful, antique armor, her lines organic and curving and lovely. He hates his silvery hair. He hates his instant ease with everyone around here. He hates his half answers. He hates what he's worth-- this effortless boogeyman. 

"They don't offer such high bounties for witches or generals," he says. "For madmen that have slaughtered villages on the borders or steppe warlords. If you've killed fifty men, why are you worth more than those who have killed hundreds. You're just a hired knight. What makes you special? Why did they whisper your name in the barracks late at night?"

Viktor looks from him to Otabek. 

"I don't know anything about this," Otabek says, ahead of Viktor's inevitable questions. "We're from different parts of the empire."

"You think there's another reason?" Viktor asks. 

"If you're real, and the bounty is real, what have you done that makes you so valuable?" Yurio asks him. 

"Wouldn't an imperial have that answer better than me?" Viktor says. 

Yuri hates this guy, which is why he slides into his space as quickly as he can and sweeps his legs. 

"Fuck," Viktor hisses, narrowly keeping himself from hitting the  ground by catching himself on his good arm. 

Yuri pulls up his own arms into a defensive block, darting back and then forward again, to tap him with quick hit. 

"Fucking fight me," Yurio says. 

"Why do you want to fight me?" Viktor says. 

"Because you're an asshole," Yuri says. He hits him again. "Because you're still mad at me for attacking you in the woods. Because the duke likes me and it makes you angry. Pick a fucking reason." 

"I'm not going to fight you, Yurio," Viktor sighs. 

Yuri catches him in the jaw. "Are you a fucking coward?" He spits.

"Fuck," Viktor swears. "I don't want to fight you!" He dodges another blow. He raises his hands defensively. 

"Then fucking act like it," Yuri says. He darts forward and taps him in the ribs. "I’m not a fucking imperial. I'm fucking here, helping you plan the evacuation. Who are you?"

"I'm Viktor," he says. "I'm just Viktor, okay! I'm no one! I was never anyone! I'm no one and that's safe!" 

He pushes him away and steps back, looking at both of them. 

He shakes his head and storms back into the little house, closing the door behind himself. 

Yuri growls, infuriated, and storms in after him.

* * *

Viktor stands in the little house, a different man than he was half an hour before. Viktor stands in the space with his hair shorn, fashioned into a new creature, one his love helped him become. Viktor tries to figure out why Yuri's questions have him so angry. 

"I don't have answers for you," Viktor says as he hears him follow him inside. 

"I have to trust you," Yurio says. "Fucking, my life is in your hands, and I know fucking nothing about you. I know you pilot a fucking antique that should have been decommissioned forty years ago and I know you're vain and I know you're going to be bald by the time you're thirty. I have to have a reason to trust you besides not having a fucking choice. I have no choice but to trust the man they called a monster in the barracks that made me who I am."

"I didn't do anything!" Viktor shouts, his voice echoing in the empty room. "You said that people who have killed more than I have are worth less and-- and I can't explain the empire! I don't understand it! I'm not of it!" He closes his eyes tight. His voice burns in his throat. "I was a child when they sacked Sanktpet, when they burned it! Yakov took me and we fled, with everyone else!"

Is he crying? He thinks he must be.

"I remember we fled the only home I knew, and I remember I never saw my mother or father again," he says. "You want to fight me, Yuri? I wish you wouldn't use my worst memories as bait."

"Yakov isn't your father?" Yurio asks him. 

"Yakov Feltsman raised me and he taught me everything I know," Viktor answers. 

"Viktor," Otabek says. He's standing in the open door when Viktor turns around to look at him. "Where did you live, before Yakov found you?"

Viktor pauses. He takes a breath, looking over at them. 

"It-- it burned," he says. "There was a fire, in the rooms. It was burning. Yakov took me and we ran."

"Before," Otabek says. "Before the fire."

Viktor shakes his head. "I don't--"

"Try," Otabek says. "Your family. Your house. Anything."

"I don't--"

"He gave you your name," Otabek says. "Yakov Feltsman. But you aren't his son?"

"Otabek, what is this about?" Viktor asks. "Did he put you up to this?"

"Before the city burned, it was a capital," Otabek says. "Nadya is an old parade model. You told me-- you told me Yakov had a cape for her somewhere. Maybe he was part of the guard."

"Maybe you're noble," Yurio says.

"Suddenly you're the expert on my life?" Viktor asks.

"Well, shit, it sounds like you aren't," Yurio answers. 

God, Viktor hates this child.

"What do you want from me?" Viktor says. "What the fuck am I supposed to say here? You want to know me? You want to trust me? Don't ask me questions about what I can't remember. You want me to like you? Don't pretend your idle curiosity is rooted in needing to be ready to evacuate. Yuuri might like you. I'm not Yuuri."

"You like Otabek," Yurio states. 

"You're not Otabek," he answers. 

Yurio rolls his eyes, theatrically.

The door on the other side of the room slides open. Minako stands there. Chris and JJ and Phichit all in tow. 

"You were going to plan an entire evacuation and you weren't going to tell us!?" JJ cries. 

"You fucking took your arm out of the sling, didn't you-- I'm going to kill you before sepsis does, Feltsman, I swear to God," Phichit hisses. 

"Nice haircut," Chris purrs. 

Viktor covers his eyes with his hand. 

"Fantastic," he mutters. "I suppose the hour is up."

* * *

* * *

Yuuri comes back to the cottage, and there are more people here. 

Phichit has re-tied Viktor’s sling, and Chris and JJ sit beside the map, poring over details. Otabek and Nishigori are in deep conversation about something with Minako. His mother and Mari are both listening. 

The room is full of people. It all feels so big. Too big to be contained in the cottage. Too big for Yuuri to be in charge. 

"Yuuri," Viktor says, looking up at him. His bangs fall into his eyes, just over his cheekbone. "Are you ready to resume?"

Yuuri swallows. His mouth feels thick and heavy. 

He stands tall, pulling his shoulders back. He nods. 

"We've been reviewing your trails leading to the palace," Chris murmurs, looking at the map. "JJ made a good point-- the soil is too loose against the two paths here to pull through berserkers, so they'll likely be coming directly, through the paddies and muck. They probably don’t know about the ridge, between the palace and the woods. If we’re lucky, it’ll act as a hidden wall."

"The nearest barracks are a week's march from here," Yuri says, on the other side of the room. "They'll only be using encampment models, so they'll be slower and older."

"Was that an encampment model that was with you?" Chris asks him. 

Yuri nods. “My unit is one, too,” he says. “I can start repairs on it.” 

"Are all of them that prone to shatter?" JJ asks him. 

"It was my first time seeing it," Yuri answers, “but berserkers that were cannon happy didn’t tend to come back.”

"If we keep them clustered, one shattering will take out more than one," Viktor says.

"The trick is keeping them clustered in the fields," Chris says. "We'll have to flank. Otabek, can you help Yuri put his armor back together?"

Otabek nods.

"What does your armory look like?" Yuri says. 

"No cannons, I'll tell you that much," Mari sighs. 

"But if we slip out quickly enough, in the dark, we won't have to fight," Yuuri says. 

"But what if we can't?" Otabek says. “There’s no time, and to get everything repaired and packed in time...the company always knew it would be close. The season is ending.”

"We have to plan for the worst," Minako says. "Plan for the worst, and you'll never be caught off guard."

Yuuri presses his lips together. "Okay," he says. "Mari-- you already told Yuuko?"

Mari nods. "The harvest is already coming in. We're harvesting front to back so it'll be less obvious from far away that we're getting ready to leave. We should assume we're watched."

Yuuri nods. "Did you talk to the guard?"

Mari nods, again. "They're making preparations to have the armory ready to go. Nishigori has already slaughtered the pigs. He's going to start smoking them for travel tomorrow."

Yuuri nods. "Good," he says. He takes a deep breath. "Do we know how the path out to the falls looks?"

* * *

It's different this time, following Yuuri from the little house to the path that leads back to the palace. The sun has just begun to set, dusk beginning to rush into the edges. There's a grayness to the light, a fuzziness. There's something for Viktor to hide in with it, how red his cheeks have suddenly become, how nervous he feels all of a sudden. 

Yuuri, the duke, walking beside him, close.

"Chris is a strong strategist," Yuuri says. 

"He's the smartest man I know," Viktor answers. 

"Phichit was pissed about your sling, eh?" Yuuri asks. Viktor catches the nervous waver in his voice. He doesn't mention it, though. 

"I think if I take it out again without his permission, he will kill me in my sleep," he answers. 

Yuuri chuckles. His voice is musical and friendly. 

They walk up the stairs quietly. Their footsteps soft. Yuuri slides the door open, and they pass through the hall and into the courtyard. And then across the courtyard, and back into the throne room. 

It's dark, again. 

"Let me light lanterns," Yuuri says. 

"Let me help," Viktor answers. 

Yuuri huffs a small laugh. It's loud in the room. Viktor hears him fiddle with a box of matches and then the rasp of a match against paper. The singing of the glass mantle pulling away from the metal holder. And then there's light. 

Yuuri tosses him the matches. Viktor lights another lamp on the other side of the room. 

It's still dark in the room, held in the golden light between the lamps. It's a lot like it was the first time. It's different. 

"I uh-- I have a bedroll," Yuuri says, his voice quiet. "Just in the corner, by the back wall."

"Right," Viktor says.

He glances across the room, and there it is.

"I-- when I set up my bedding down here, you weren't talking to me," Yuuri says. "And then I didn't have a chance with all the planning to grab something for you-- shit." 

Viktor looks back a Yuuri, to look at him in silhouette. 

At the shadow of him, cast through the darkness. The curves and shapes of him. 

"Viktor," Yuuri says, and there's a way his voice cracks, that Viktor knows. 

He slides across the room, to pull him into his arms. Yuuri's breath shatters, and he sobs. Yuuri sobs, he cries. His tears leave big puddles on his shirt, and he hiccups and sobs and sighs. Yuuri cries and cries, and Viktor holds him tight. 

Viktor holds Yuuri tight and close, until he finally stops crying. 

Yuuri takes a deep breath. His lungs shake. 

"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm sorry. Sorry. I'm-- I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, Viktor."

"Why?" Viktor asks him. 

"You don't want to have to-- I'm sorry I'm crying. I'm sorry," he  murmurs. 

"Yuuri," Viktor murmurs. "Don't apologize. This is a very...I imagine you must be exhausted."

Yuuri laughs, again. Humorlessly. "I wanted to be...I wanted to be fun. I wanted to--" He laughs again. "I wanted to fuck you and you to think I'm fun."

Viktor laughs, too.

"I do think you're fun," Viktor says. "And I want to fuck you. But I also think you-- you have a lot going on. A lot of responsibilities. I don't feel...I don't feel cheated or like I'm missing something when I'm here with you and it's not fun or we're not fucking." He brushes a tear away from Yuuri's round cheek. "I'm here because I love you, Yuuri. I'm holding you because I love you. Don't apologize."

Yuuri takes a deep breath, letting his eyes flutter closed for a moment. 

"Today has been dramatic," he says softly.

Viktor chuckles. "That's a word for it," he says. "You must be exhausted. Last night was--"

"Last night was awful," Yuuri interrupts. "It didn't even happen to you, Viktor. Last night was awful." He pushes at his eyes with the heels of his hands. He sniffs. "I'm exhausted."

"Then let me set up your bedroll and sleep, Yuuri," he says. "Don't be a fool."

Yuuri laughs, again. Viktor loves his laughter. He loves his voice. He loves everything about him. 

"Okay," Yuuri says. "Okay."

The bedroll is thin, but it's not lumpy. The blanket Viktor lays over it is soft with a fine hand. He pulls a lamp near to it. 

Yuuri looks at Viktor, at the bedroll. 

"Don't go," he says, his voice very soft. 

"I won't," Viktor says. "I can't."

Viktor tangles his hand into Yuuri's, as Yuuri steps down slowly to lie down on the bedroll.

"We don't have enough time," Yuuri says. 

"You always knew you just had the summer," Viktor says. "It's why you hired us."

"It didn't let me go this time," Yuuri says. "The dancing. It held me for so long. It's coming sooner than I realized it would. The plan isn't going to be enough."

"The plan never is," Viktor says. "But we still have to plan. And the worst hasn't arrived yet. The end hasn't happened. We can still fight. We haven't lost anyone yet. We won't lose anyone."

Yuuri's grip is iron.

"I don't know what I'll do if anyone gets hurt," Yuuri whispers. 

"Phichit will stitch them back together, and we'll keep moving," he says. "He's evacuating with the first group so he'll be safe and he'll be waiting at the first camp. We've planned for this. I promise, Yuuri. We've done this before, and we've planned for this."

"What if they follow us?" Yuuri asks. 

"That's why you hired me, remember?" Viktor says. 

"You know what I mean," Yuuri says. "Viktor--"

"I know what you mean," he interrupts. "I know."

It's silent between them for a moment. The silence is chilly.

"Are you sure I didn't cut your hair too short?" Yuuri asks, after a long moment. 

"It's perfect," Viktor says. "I keep wondering why I never cut it before."

"It's still in your eyes," Yuuri yawns. 

"I think it makes me look dashing," he answers. 

"You always look dashing," Yuuri says. "You look just like a prince."

"You sound like Yakov," Viktor murmurs. "Next thing I know, you'll be telling me to stand up straight."

Yuuri sighs, just a little, softly. "I'm tired," he says. "And I'm scared."

"We're all scared," Viktor says. "But I have faith in everyone, that it will all be okay."

"Thank you," Yuuri says,"for your faith."

"Sleep, Yuuri," Viktor says.

And gently, slowly, he drifts off as Viktor guards him.

* * *


	13. harvest

Yuuri sits with the lantern in the deep night, waiting. 

He can't sleep. He won't sleep, not tonight. He knew he wouldn't. He's barely slept at all, this week. The feeling, the fear has been keeping him up. The memory of the dance springing into him like a nightmare every time he closes his eyes. 

Mari left hours ago. Scouting in her armor, low and slow and clumsy. Low and slow and clumsy and invaluable, her cargo carrier loaded heavy with rice.

Yuuri feels panic press against his lungs. Like a slow rising tide. He takes a shuddering breath. 

The night is late and black as pitch.

"Hey," Viktor says. 

Yuuri turns. His shoulder is healed now, out of the sling. He's dressed in his uniform for the armor. His suspenders pulled over his shoulders, his shoulder holsters on tight. His silver hair falling into his blue eyes. 

"You should be asleep, or getting ready or--"

"You should be asleep, Yuuri," Viktor answers, stepping up close to him, leaning against the wall Yuuri's sitting on. 

"We both should be asleep," Yuuri murmurs. 

It's dark. Pitch black but for the muted light thrown by Yuuri's lantern. It's the middle of the night.

"You'll be safe?" Yuuri asks. 

"Yuuri," Viktor sighs. 

"Viktor, please," Yuuri says.

Viktor takes a deep breath. 

"I won't take undue risks," he replies after a moment. 

"Okay," Yuuri murmurs. 

He's so scared, is the thing. He's so scared his heart aches. His hands shake. His eyes can't focus, painful and heavy behind his lids. 

Viktor's hand reaches out, to hold his. Wraps around his fingers gently. 

The fields are empty. The rice has been harvested. The cargo is packed. It's soon. 

"I love you," Viktor says.

"I love you," Yuuri answers. 

Viktor lets go of his hand and walks away, to do his duty. 

Yuuri damns the day he met him, and time slips on. 

The night grows darker, and then it happens. It's the moment between night and dawn, the darkest hours before the sun begins to come up. 

It's dark enough that they can't be seen, the lack of light like coarse velvet. Close enough to morning though that it will be light by the time the children and the rice is deep in the forest. They'll be able to see the hidden path by the time the sun comes up. They'll be hidden by the woods by the time the sun comes up. 

It's time. Yuuri knows. 

While Yuuri has sat on the wall, waiting and watching, the village has awoken and begun to gather. Getting ready to go.

Yuuko is over by the docks, with her girls and Minami. There's a crowd of other children around her, the rest of the village. The guard is going to follow them-- Minami in that strange place between being a child and a guard at only fifteen. Hiroko is with them, too. Yuuri's own mother. Ready to lead. 

Minako stands next to him. Her own pack is pulled over her shoulders. 

"Are you ready?" she asks him. 

"No," he says. 

"We never were, either," she says. "If that's a comfort."

"It's not," Yuuri says. 

"Your bed warmer is a fine strategist," she says. 

"Thank you, Minako," Yuuri says. 

"You're a fine leader," she continues. "A fine leader and an uncanny oracle."

"If something happens," Yuuri says, looking at her, "if something happens, you'll let me die, instead of anyone else. If something happens, you won't make them come back for me. You won't come back for me."

Minako's brow furrows. 

"That's an order," Yuuri says. "This I command you, as your duke."

Her eyebrows raise. Her expression is strange, unreadable, for just a moment. 

"Worse than your father," she murmurs, and she turns and walks away. 

Yuuri stands in the dark, and he watches the village slowly trickle out of the palace and into the woods. 

Distantly, miles away, something snaps and shatters and rumbles. They're coming, like Yuuri knew they would be. 

It's happening. 

They're on the run. 

* * *

Viktor stands at the far edge of the field with Nadya, waiting. 

This is the part he hates the most. More than the fighting, Viktor hates the waiting. He hates the hours and hours of complete silence, listening to the way the outside echoes in his helmet. He hates how the operating harness rubs against his shoulders, how it hangs on his spine. 

Viktor hates the waiting more than anything, but now he hates the waiting in a different sort of way. There's a bitterness in his chest; something that has twisted inside of himself. Something that hurts, as he stands and hopes (hopes) that Yuuri is doing the smart thing, the responsible thing, the right thing and is leaving with everyone else. Viktor hopes that he's gone. Viktor hopes that he can protect him. 

Viktor has been out here at the edge of the fields since late last night. Waiting. Knowing that it will come.

What if they don't come at all? Yuuri had asked them, while they were planning, sitting around a map in the little house outside the palace.

None of them had an answer. All of them knew it would. All of them know it will. 

And then--

Well, it does. 

Hour six by Viktor's reckoning of the clock inside Nadya and shapes begin to coalesce from the pre-dawn mist.

"Here," Otabek says, his voice scratchy over the radio. 

"There," Viktor answers. 

"Now," Yurio says, over the line.

Viktor's at the far edge of the fields, nearer to the palace, in Nadya with Otabek. Up ahead, JJ and Yurio wait, nearer. Closer. Yurio at the front so he can scramble their communication lines-- he doesn't have the updated keys, but he has the same equipment, and it should be enough. 

Nadya's too big for him to meaningfully hide, but Aiman is smaller and lower. Viktor's hoping she doesn't have to fight at all-- that JJ and Yurio will take out whatever ragged crew emerges from the woods quickly, that they'll be able to dispatch them with no problems. 

Chris at the flanking side. Yurio and JJ up at the front. Otabek and Viktor toward the back of the palace. 

Time. They have to buy time. The village and Yuuri and Hiroko and Phichit and the three little girls and Minako and everyone-- everyone-- has trailed into the woods with Mari scouting up ahead in her low, clumsy agricultural armor. Moving quickly, though through the dark. Viktor knows that they're here to buy time. To make sure they get past the falls and deeper into the hard-to-traverse woods. Deeper into the countryside. Further from the grasp of the empire. 

Viktor wonders if the rest of the company is ready to die-- as ready to die as he is, that this village might be safe. 

That Yuuri might be safe.

Viktor wonders, as he hears the first cracks and rumbles of lightning cannons priming to fire.

* * *

Yuuri pulls up the rear of the party, Nishigori beside him, marching through the woods. 

It's silent, in the woods. Yuuri trails behind the rest of the village, an hour behind. He watched them all go, and then he watched the sun begin to come up, and then he left himself, Nishigori there to guard him, to watch him. 

It's silent in the woods. Yuuri has followed behind the village, his people, before and it's never as silent as it is now. It's never so eerie as this. There is no rogue shout that echoes out from the trees. There is no song that follows them. Even the birds and cicadas and crickets and flies seem silent. Everything hushed. Everything waiting. Everything knowing that something-- something is coming. 

They went as quickly as they dared. Yuuri follows them. The path is not smooth. Along the trail there are little signs-- crushed grass and torn branches. Small and not uncommon. 

Yuuri has a pack, heavy, slung over his back. It's full of rice. His bedroll is tucked above it, wrapped around his clothes. It's silent. It's eerie. 

Yuuri was the last to leave the palace-- the last that isn't in armor. 

Yuuri tries not think about Viktor. 

About Viktor and Otabek and JJ and Chris and Yurio. Yuuri tries not to think about them. He tries not to think about Viktor, a lock of his hair braided around his neck beneath the heavy-tusk collar. 

Yuuri tries not to think about them. 

_ I love you. _

Yuuri feels it, and then he knows it. It hits him, standing among the high bamboo, the sudden knowledge. The drowning.

Yuuri feels it, and then he sees it.

"Yuuri?" Nishigori asks him, and Yuuri realizes that he's fallen into the dirt, the leaves and debris sticking to him. 

Yuuri swallows back acid bile. Yuuri knows. Yuuri knows.

"I have to go back," he says. Dizzy. "I can save him, Nishigori. I can save him-- I have to go back."

Nishigori frowns.

"I don't have time," Yuuri says, and he pulls himself up from the ground, shaking. "They told me-- the showed me. The showed me and I know. I can save him." He shrugs off his pack. 

"Yuuri!" Nishigori cries, looking at it. 

"Cache it for me up ahead," Yuuri calls, running as fast as he dares. "Behind the waterfall. I'll get it when I come back."

"Yuuri--"

"He'll drown!" Yuuri shouts, and he runs.

Yuuri runs, back down the paths, past the trees and bamboo, closer and closer and closer to the lake. It's so much further than he was hoping. He has less time than he needs. He needs time. He needs time. He needs to save him. He can save him. Yuuri knows he can save him. 

Yuuri runs, keeping his feet underneath him and his blood running circuit through him. The knowledge-- the feeling-- hits him in waves. 

Most of the imperial units have been destroyed. Some of it worked-- the cannons went critical and destroyed most of their own units. There are a couple hanging on though, pressing deeper and deeper through the fields and toward where Viktor's waiting.

He's going to get impatient. He's not going to wait.

He's going to sink into the field and he's going to drown. 

Yuuri knows. He can see it. He can feel it. The drowning. The feeling that's been hunting him, haunting him, all this time. The drowning. It's Viktor.

But he knows. He knows and he can save him. 

Yuuri runs for Viktor's life.

* * *

* * *

Three of them. It's three of them that peel out from the mist like ghosts, like bad omens, like wavering hangover headaches that materialize from out of the ether to hang thrumming and omnipresent between Viktor's eyes. 

Three brawlers come out of the mist, their canons already primed and glowing, their shapes hulking and huge. They're all beat to shit-- caked in mud, red paint scratches and chipped and flaked. 

Viktor doesn't say anything. The radio is conspicuously silent. 

They creep out of the fog. Nothing follows.

The sound of the radio getting scrambled is piercing and sharp. Yurio. 

One of the brawlers pivots suddenly, to aim a cannon at the space that Yurio was in.

Nimble scout he, the space is empty. The cannon fires at empty air. JJ pulls around from the other side, while the brawler nearer to him stands stock still. 

Felix's bulky hands come crushing down, over the Brawler's carapace, and there's the crackling of something shattering. The static in Viktor's cockpit goes wild. 

He doesn't say anything. His hands itch along the control tabs, deep in the arms of his armor. He sweats. 

JJ punches under with Felix's other arm. The brawler stumbles back. The cannon begins to crackle and hiss. 

Yurio slips in from behind a copse of trees, pulling a machete from the back of his armor. He goes for the knees. 

"Fuck!" a brawler cries over the radio.

"Traitor," another says. 

There's a hiss and then a click and the radio goes totally dead again. 

The third unit, undamaged, reaches with it's singular hand to grab Yuri's long, wobbling radio antenna. Yurio reaches out with his hands and grabs the cannon bearing arm. He jerks it, or tries to. He stumbles back as the imperial pulls out his antenna. The feedback screeches. Viktor grimaces. He doesn't say anything. If Yuri does, he can't hear it. 

The imperial on the ground gets up, just as a fourth brawler appears-- this one so old the red paint has flaked off almost entirely, so dirty that the gunmetal silver of it has picked up a dusty, brown tinge. 

Four against two. 

Viktor knows the others must see him. He's not hidden. He's pretty conspicuous. 

Viktor waits. He hates waiting. 

The cannon finally goes off, JJ just barely managing to duck it's blinding, terrible blast. 

Yuri darts backward, putting distance between himself and the unit that still has his antenna in its clenched fist. Yuri darts backward, before cutting to the side and behind, into a blindspot. These bulky brawlers, they're all blind spots. Viktor knows Yuri knows. Viktor knows Yuri would know better than anyone. 

The fourth unit, it walks forward, ignoring the conflict around it like it's no more than a minor scuffle. In the large scheme of things, Viktor supposes that's true. 

He has to buy time. That's why they're here. 

Viktor takes a deep breath and pulls Nadya forward to meet the approaching brawler. 

No one says anything. Viktor can feel Otabek's disapproval on his back like a cloak. 

Viktor steps into the fields, and he hears the water slosh into the cavities in Nadya's legs. She can wade pretty far in. He's not actually sure how deep the fields get. He hopes not too deep. 

Viktor steps into the fields, and the brawler wades in to meet him. 

"You fucking idiot," Yuri hisses over the radio. 

There he is, Viktor thinks. He smiles. 

He hates waiting.

* * *

Yuuri runs, as fast as he can, and then he makes it to the edge of the docks. 

He stands there for just a moment, trying to breathe. He can't catch it. He hears the sound-- metal on metal, the crush of branches and trees. Yuuri tries to breathe-- he feels like he's going to puke-- and he hears the crackling, striking of the lightning cannon going off. He thinks maybe he can see the after flash. He's not sure. 

Yuuri runs up the steps and through the empty, echoing halls of the palace. Yuuri runs through the courtyards, flinging the doors behind him. This shell of a place echoing and ringing with his desperate footsteps, his hungry breath. 

Yuuri flings the front doors of the palace wide and runs down the steps as quickly as he can, watching Nadya's wide, gunmetal shoulders shrug and shudder under the weight of a brawler's fist. Yuuri watches the brawler's cannon arm raise and Nadya catch it, point it away. 

Yuuri can see it happening, and he runs.

"Yuuri," Otabek shouts, his voice crackling on the exterior speaker. Yuuri keeps running though, ignoring him. Down the steps and through the beaten dirt and into the fields. The water sloshing under his feet, the mud squishing up into his shoes. Yuuri wades and walks as fast as he can. He knows right where they are. There's a ridge in the field, a ditch that's hidden, invisible. Yuuri doesn't have to keep watching to know what will happen. The brawler's cannon goes off as Yuuri shields his eyes, stinging in the white-light afterglow. The cannon goes off; it will jam. Viktor reaches out and manipulates the brawler in Nadya's long, strong arms. 

Far in the back, a cannon goes critical. Jams. The ground shakes as it explodes in white fire. 

There's a terrible groan, and then--

Yuuri can see it happen. See Nadya's foot get caught in the long ridge under the water in the field. Yuuri can see it happen, as clearly as he has ever felt it while dancing. All the years of it. 

Yuuri watches as Nadya tumbles forward, on top of the brawler. Yuuri watches as the cannon fires once more, skating across the water and into the cluster of armor in the distance. He keeps running, running through the slog, through the mud and the water. 

Nadya sinks into the field. The groaning and grinding of metal is incredible, unbearable. Both of the units collapse into the soft mud beneath.

He'll drown, he'll drown, he'll drown. 

Yuuri stumbles, trips his way through the muck. He makes it over to the overheated bulk of the collapsed armor. His hands burn against the exterior, his skin aches in the hissing water. He pulls at the metal, looking for any kind of release panel, any kind of opening or leverage. 

The pile shifts. The brawler underneath pulling out just a little, the top of its cockpit edging up out of the water.

It hisses as it opens. The pilot springs out. 

Yuuri has no weapons on him. No knives, no pistols. The pilot's face is twisted, snarling. His eyes dart. Yuuri backs away, but the pilot presses forward. He looks thin, like Yuri does. 

"Wait-- I don't--" He starts to say, but the pilot swings forward, holding a knife. 

Yuuri dodges and ducks. The water is thick and murky up around his ankles. The pilot screams, slashing wildly with his knife. He darts forward and Yuuri pivots to the side, letting him stumble past him. 

"I don't want to hurt you!" Yuuri cries. 

"Then  _ die _ ," the pilot hisses. He slashes and swings forward. 

Yuuri grabs his knife hand, firm in his fingers. He twists his hand and grabs his knife. Stabs him, all instinct, in the chest.

Just like sparring.

Nothing like sparring.

The pilot has green eyes that go wide as he realizes. He gurgles, just a little, and then collapses into the muck.

Yuuri looks at his body, for just a moment, before he dives back toward Nadya, desperate for any way in. Any way to pull Viktor out. 

"Please," Yuuri whispers. "Please."

Something catches. Something clicks and grinds and aches to slip free. Something slides, and a panel opens and then more and--

The cavity-- the chamber is fully submerged.

Yuuri dives underneath. The water is murky-- brown green and spotted in the early morning sun. Yuuri reaches out blindly for the clasps and release on the harness, feeling Viktor's warm body still under his hands. 

His lungs scream for air. He presses a closure hard with his hands. It snaps free. Yuuri reaches for Viktor's shoulders, obscured shapes under the water. His silver hair floats a haloed fringe around his eye-closed face. Yuuri pulls him, out of the harness, up to the surface of the water. He's still unconscious. 

Yuuri pulls him up, leans him against the armor, out of the water. He smears his wet hair away from his forehead, slaps his cheeks under his hands. 

"Please," he prays. "Please."

He pulls him up onto the flat bulk of Nadya's raised thigh. He presses on his chest. Water burbles out from between Viktor's lips.

"Breathe," Yuuri commands, with all the authority he can summon-- he can dare.

He presses air through Viktor's lips, into his lungs. He wills him into living, into staying here with him. 

Yuuri pulls away, presses his chest again and--

Viktor coughs, coughs and sputters. His brow crinkles, he squints and blinks awake.

He rolls to his side and vomits into the water. 

Yuuri feels something roll through him, some feeling he can't name or explain or describe. Something that isn't relief. Something that isn't shame. Something that isn't pride. Something he doesn't understand. 

Viktor coughs and coughs. Yuuri holds him by the shoulders, straddling his hips. Viktor coughs and then he turns and looks at him.

His expression is unreadable.

"Yuuri?" He sputters, still coughing.

Yuuri nods, overwhelmed.

"There's-- you have to--"

"You were drowning," Yuuri interrupts. 

At the end of the field, there is another crackle and hiss, and something else explodes. 

* * *


	14. autumn

The pain is back in his side, but that's okay. The going is slow enough.

There's a pack cached for him behind the waterfall, near where Yuuri's is cached. There's a pack cached for Viktor, but he's not sure how he'll carry it. 

It never occurred to him before today that there would be a battle he lived through but not Nadezhda. It feels strange to have left her there in the fields. Not empty armor but a corpse. 

His arm is slung over Yuuri's shoulder. His clothes are still damp underneath him. 

Four came from out of the woods. The encampment that Yuri told them would come. In the next weeks, there will be more; more than they could hope to fight.

They are already long gone. 

"It was you," Yuuri tells him, voice laced with something astounded and strange. "All this time, it was always you."

Viktor's throat is still raw and sore. Vomiting will do that, he supposes. Nearly drowning would, too.

Behind them, the rest of the company follows. Yuri, too. 

Viktor's arm thrown over his shoulders, Yuuri walks them carefully, slowly, toward home.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so!! this is what i did this summer. it was an initially 45k project that got a little bigger and a little bigger and a little bigger, and there's still some stuff i can't believe i didn't manage to get to.   
> i would like to extend my most profound thanks and amazement to kris, who made gorgeous art that really helped to make this world a little bigger and brighter and more coherent.   
> the work's title is taken from a song by the talking heads. the intense percussion and emphasis on the feeling of social anxiety was an great inspiration for the tone and rhythm of combat in this work.   
> i hope ya'll enjoyed.


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